Monaco and San Remo – day trip options from Nice

Following on from my post about Nice in the South of France, I wanted to talk about some of the day trip options you can do from there. At the end of my post I mentioned being able to get to Monaco in half an hour and Italy in an hour and a half. When I was looking for somewhere that was nearby to Nice, I immediately got excited at the possibility of visiting more than one country on the same trip.

Monaco and Monte Carlo

Monaco was the obvious choice. It’s so close it uses Nice airport as it’s main airport. It looks ridiculously close on a map, and when I looked into it more you can get there in about half an hour by train. Also Monaco is known the world over as being a land of luxury. Casinos, yachts and money. The place where Grace Kelly met her Prince – the original Meghan Markle. Where everyone feels like James Bond on a night out.

Starting our day to Monaco

We got up early from the asylum and made our way to Gare de Nice Ville a few minutes away. If you haven’t read about my trip to Nice yet, my post here might explain more about this comment. The train only cost us about 4 Euro to get to Monaco. A price so cheap even the most budget of travelers can splash out on a trip from Nice. After half an hour we arrived at the train station in Monte Carlo. A ridiculously quick train journey to say you’d been to another country.

Warning – Monaco is all hills

We walked out of the train station, crossed the street and looked down to the harbor. A beautiful view, but for me a sinking feeling. No, that wasn’t a pun about the sea. But rather about choices I’d made earlier that day. See, I knew Monaco was supposed to be this fancy place full of rich, elegant people gambling and watching Formula 1 all day (stereotypes much?). So that morning I decided I would join the fancy people and wear my nicest shoes. They just happened to be heels.

The thought of having to walk up and down hills all day made me apprehensive. Fast forward 4 hours and I couldn’t take it any longer, I went shoe shopping. Don’t be like me, dress comfortably or get your driver to meet you at the station. What? You don’t have a personal chauffeur? Well you’d better wear flat shoes then!

Monaco harbour

So taking in the views we walked in the direction of the harbour. Some of us in comfortable shoes (my friend) and some of us like Bambi on roller-skates (me). The beautiful blue water of the harbour was very welcoming on the scorching day. The sun beat down on us as we ambled down the steep road to the inner harbour. Passing hotel after hotel, restaurants with increasingly enviable patio views, and big yachts getting bigger as we worked our way down the hill. I will say that for me Monaco didn’t have a lot of character to it’s buildings. It felt like a lot of holiday resorts where buildings were varying shades of beige.

Once in the harbour we came across a yacht expo. OK so that’s probably not what it was called, but basically it was a yacht sale. Dozens of expensive yachts to walk around and imagine yourself owning. Like an open house for yachts. Do you want the one with room for a family of 10 to dine out back? Or the one where you can launch a smaller boat from the stern? The choice was yours. We somehow got passes (clearly they were having a slow day of millionaires) and were taken by boat to go view the other bigger boats. It can’t have been because we looked rich since I couldn’t even walk in my heels. Still, it was nice to get a taste for how the other half live.

The Prince’s Palace of Monaco

Possibly the longest walk of my life (stopping for shoes along the way) was from Monaco inner harbour to the Palace. A classic case of “well it doesn’t look that far, I can’t see it from here”. Yes, you can see where the palace is, but it’s not a straight road to get there. It’s the longest road up the other side of the harbour area (opposite where we came down earlier). Then it doubles back on itself and you walk the whole length again until you get to the entrance of the palace grounds. I will say that the whole walk, although uphill on a hot day with sore feet, had magnificent views. Looking out to sea, the sky melting into the sea in a real life palette of varying blues… It was a picture perfect scene.

The palace itself was very grand, the stuff of Hollywood dreams. Or in this case, one Hollywood dream, that of Grace Kelly. Throughout Monaco you can see she was widely revered but nowhere is this more evident than at the palace. Her name and face are well publicized. It seems she was clearly adored by everyone. The palace itself had beautiful gardens and was a great way to spend a couple of hours.

Monte Carlo Casino

We had spent a lot of time walking in Monaco that day, seeing many of the tourist sites. But one of the things we hadn’t yet done was visit one of the most famous places in Monaco – the casino. I had never been in a casino until that point, so really didn’t know what to expect. Were we dressed nice enough to go in? How do you gamble on a budget? The casino was incredible. A circular driveway with perfectly manicured trees and garden leading up to the entrance. Incredible expensive cars parked out front looked like James Bond brought his 5 besties for the day. The doorway flanked by well dressed doormen inviting us in. “Act like you belong” repeated in my head, and we walked in.

Being first time gamblers I didn’t really know where to start. Now after a few trips to Vegas you’d find me making a beeline for the Blackjack table. But at this point in time I didn’t really know what I was doing. We could see that to play poker (the only other game I knew how to play) you had to go into a side room. That seemed to me that even if I could hold my own at the table, I likely couldn’t afford to walk through that door. So we stuck to the slots, played a little bit to say we’d been and left. I bought a poker chip magnet from the gift shop to show I’d been, and we left Monaco for the day heading back to the train station.

San Remo, Italy

San Remo was a little further from Nice, but one of the first bigger towns in Italy from what I could see on a map. My friend’s mother is Italian but she herself had never been to Italy. Because of that we figured we might as well go with being so close. I’d also never been to Italy before. But it was the land of pizza, it would be awesome right?

Arriving in San Remo

We took the train to San Remo from the same train station in Nice – Gare de Nice Ville. The tickets only cost 8 Euro each and it only took us an hour and a half to get to San Remo. But that was including a 25 minute stop/train change in Ventimiglia. Looking back we probably could have just traveled to Ventimiglia as our day trip, a very nice looking Italian town. But continuing on we arrived in San Remo. Like anywhere along the Riviera, all signs pointed to the beach. The weather was sunny, hot and the skies were blue. Seriously, does it ever rain in this part of the world?

A stroll along the promenade

While neither Nice nor Monaco could ever be described as bustling and go-go-go, San Remo seemed to be the most laid back place. We found it to be a very sleepy town – literally! Like many Mediterranean towns they closed most of the shops for a couple of hours in the middle of the day for siesta time. Unfortunately we didn’t have long there so this kind of messed up our plans a bit. So a lot of our day was just walking around and relaxing by the beach. The walk from the train station to the main town was nice, along the promenade, but a little far in the midday heat.

Walking around the side streets of San Remo

One respite from the sun was to walk around some of the picturesque back streets of San Remo. We walked along narrow cobble-stone streets that looked like the setting of a Fiat commercial, and admired the traditional sights of this sleepy Italian town. Shutter-windowed apartments with laundry lines between buildings. Hilly, winding alleyways with stone doorways leading to beautiful churches. We didn’t see many people on our travels, it was rather quiet in San Remo. Not a lot of tourists as we had come across in Monaco.

Unique local shops

We found that San Remo had a lot of nice individual shops, once they opened up mid afternoon. While walking around some of the smaller streets we came across a couple of beautiful, open piazzas. Outdoor seating was set up in front of cafes, locals sipping on wine and coffee, relaxing in the sun. One we came across had a lovely little market set up with some local wares for sale. Flowers and spices, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even some clothing and accessories.

We took advantage of the pastry shops and bought a lot of delicious sweets and biscuits. One thing I did notice, and I don’t know if this is just me, but the town wasn’t overly friendly. We went into a couple of shops where it seemed more of a hassle to serve us than anything. I get we were non-Italian speaking tourists in a non-English speaking town but still not a great feeling. In one particular shop the cashier asked where I was from. I replied “England”, then asked a question about something for sale. He shrugged and said he didn’t really know English. Five minutes later my friend purchased something and was the same question. “Canada”, she said. All of sudden he knew English and was chatting about Vancouver. And this was before anyone had heard the word Brexit, so we can’t even blame that!

Ending our visit to Italy

With only a couple hours left we figured we had to end Italy on a high note. That meant food! We started walking back towards the train station and passed a lovely looking restaurant close to the water. With a great view and sunny weather, we took a seat on the patio. I ordered an Italian beer, and some pasta. I went for the Arrabiata sauce which was described as tomato and herbs. As a vegetarian I figured I couldn’t go wrong. The main ingredient of the dish that should not be left out of the description is the chili. Spicy was an understatement, but it was good even if I couldn’t feel my face. Full of carbs we took a slow walk back to the station and took the train home.

Final thoughts

Nice is a wonderful place, the people are friendly and the city has ample things to see and do. That being said, I wouldn’t spend more than a couple of days unless you are happy lounging on the beach. I think day trips are a must if you’re in the area, with so many places nearby. I loved Monaco and thoroughly recommend it. A beautiful place with lovely views and a different feel from Nice. San Remo, honestly I would probably not go back. I’m sure there are places just as close by with more going on. It might also be best to check out a place before you go so you know if they close up for half of your visit! The whole area along the Riviera is exquisite though, ideal weather and blue sea for miles. I’m glad I went.

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If you have enjoyed this post please feel free to share using the social media buttons below, or leave a comment. Have you been to Monaco or San Remo? Do you recommend any other places in the area that are great trips from Nice?