Best day trips from Nice

Most visitors to the French Riviera base themselves in Nice, or along the coast around Cannes and Antibes, and this hub covers the day trips that work well from either of those bases without requiring you to change accommodation. A day trip out to Monaco and Èze is one of the most requested outings, heading east along the corniches, though the real driving time from Nice in summer traffic is significant and worth planning for rather than underestimating.

The perched villages make for a different kind of day trip: Saint-Paul-de-Vence and Vence can be visited in a morning that includes the Fondation Maeght or the Chapelle du Rosaire, while Grasse offers a scent-focused alternative with its perfume houses. The Vallée des Merveilles cannot be done as a single day trip from the coast in the way the other villages can, since parts of it have no road access at all and require walking in and out. Heading west from either base, a day trip to Cannes and the Îles de Lérins takes in La Croisette and Sainte-Marguerite, an island shaped directly by its history as a fortress and a prison.

A Verdon day trip is one of the longest outings from Nice, driving inland for the view over the gorges before summer crowds typically build up later in the day. Because these are mountain and corniche roads with real bends and elevation change, and because summer traffic affects Monaco, Èze and Saint-Paul-de-Vence differently on any given day, this hub lays out realistic timings for each trip rather than treating driving distance as a stand-in for driving time. Where a day trip is bookable as a guided excursion through GetYourGuide or Viator, that option is noted alongside the self-drive alternative, since public transport does not reach most of the perched villages independently.