~ Nice ~
Nice is one of those picture perfect cities, the beach goes for miles and the sunsets are so peaceful and calm, even though there is always so much happening on the esplanade. Nice was our first stop in the south of France, when we landed we went straight to our airbnb, we tried to barter with our taxi driver and the only thing he said was “you’re not in Bali anymore, this is the south of france”, so don’t barter it won’t work.. haha! We had the cutest little airbnb with a French family, they made us breakfast every morning in their little courtyard under the trees and made us really feel at home.
The city is huge, It has a really long high street with loads of shops and restaurants, We mostly ate at bakeries because you can’t get much better then the bakeries in the south of France! Many chocolate croissants were eaten during our time here. Make sure you hire bikes out and go cycling along the esplanade, it is so damn long unless you want to be walking for hours and hours I highly recommend. We actually used Nice as a base to get to Monaco (which I have written about in another part of my website), so instead of spending one of our three days in Nice we spent it in Monaco which you should definitely do as there is only so much to see in Nice.
~ Cannes ~
Cannes was a brief stop, we didn’t stay the night as we wanted to get to St Tropez but it is such a cute little place, the beach is the main attraction, everywhere sells paninnis so life is good!
~ St Tropez ~
Holy moly, St Tropez is so amazing and so it should be considering the price of everything! The town itself is basically on the harbour, which gives that real boaty vibe, everyones eating ice cream and shopping designer.It is a really beautiful place but I wouldn’t recommend staying anywhere central unless you book somewhere months in advance, and you have a bit of coin to spend. We did look on Airbnb but the only places available were about an hours drive out of St Tropez and they were still very expensive.
After we had lunch and strolled around we decided to go to the big supermarket which is on the main roundabout. All the campsites were full and like 50 euros for one night so we decided to sleep in the car, we purchased a couple of pillows, a duvet and some dinner and found a beautiful spot by the water. It was right next to a main road but we just used our towels and sleeping bags to cover the windows. The next morning we woke up to the sunrise and boy was it amazing, better then anything you would have experienced in any campsite!
~ Sanary-Sur-Mer ~
So we actually stumbled across this place by accident, we didn’t even see it on the map when we were heading to Marseille! Whilst driving through all the pink and yellow buildings we thought this place looks bloody awesome, so we decided to park up and go for a wonder. We ended up hiking up to a castle and overlooking the ocean, we had the most delicious lunch ever by the harbour, I fell asleep on the beach and I got a bag of mini olives for 2 euros!!!! This was one of my favourite places in the south of France, probably because it was so unexpected!
~ Marseille ~
It’s basically impossible to park around the harbour of Marseille and that is where you want to be when you come to this city. We parked about a 20 minute walk away from the harbour and got the directions from maps.me, it took us through all the back roads which probably wasn’t the best of routes. It ended up getting so dodgy that we actually ran to the harbour! Please remember, just because you’re in the south of France doesn’t mean its safe, every city has a bad side and we just happened to walk through it. Make sure you stick to the main roads…
When we finally got to the harbour we had lunch and ended up getting ice cream too, you can’t possibly see a rose shaped ice-cream and not get one! The harbour itself is pretty nice but it is quite dirty.
~ Toulouse ~
The only reason we came to Toulouse was because we had to drop the car off and get the bus to Barcelona which was about 6 hours. It was a super stressful day as we dropped the car back early and had nowhere to stay in Barcelona. Overall the south of France was amazing but I don’t think anywhere past Sanary-Sur-Mer. We didn’t get time to see everywhere so I am sure we missed lots of lovely places but the other little villages we encounter were not a good time.