In August, I went to Nice, France with my parents and we stayed in the Radisson SAS on La Promenade Des Anglais (Walk of the English). Our hotel wasn't far from the airport so out taxi journey was short and we travelled along the road of the promenade to reach the hotel. It was a pleasant journey along the sea front as the sea was a gorgeous blue, which made it look really appealing. The sun was shining and there were people everywhere so I was more excited about my holiday already.
~ Background ~
Before Nice was urbanised there was just a band of large pebbles along the coast of Nice. In the second half of the 18th Century the English started spending the winters in Nice. During one particularly cold winter, when an influx of beggars came to Nice, the rich Englishmen thought of a useful project for the beggars to do - the construction of a walkway. The Promenade was first called the Camin dei Anglès (the English Way) by the Niçois in their native dialect Nissart. The name was changed to Las Promenade Des Anglais (the French translation) in 1860.
~ First Impressions ~
The first thing I noticed about the area was the gorgeous blue sea and the fact that the beach wasn't sand like you'd normally expect. Instead it consisted of pebbles. I don't like sand so I thought this would be really good as the sea looked so appealing for a dip :-) The hotel we were staying in had a private section of the beach, which you could use your daily pass for (instead of going to the pool) so I was looking forward to spending some days on the beach :-) (and this is very unlike me!)
~ On the beach ~
On the second day of our holiday, after spending the day exploring Nice, we went to the hotel's private beach for a couple of hours. The pebbles were extremely hard to walk on and they were hurting my feet even though I had flip-flops on.
I decided I would go straight for a dip so I decided to be brave, took my flip flops off and walked down to the sea. The pebbles were hot and hard under my feet but I persevered until I reached the sea. It is really steep from the edge of the pebbles to the sea and I was walking down this slope I slipped and nearly fell in! My feet just sunk into the pebbles and the small ones got between my toes. I didn't like it at all.
I then went back to where we were sitting and I put my flip-flops on. My feet (and flip flops) once again sunk into the pebbles and as I tried to lift my foot up my flip-flop got washed into sea. I started panicking as I didn't want to lose my flip-flop but fortunately it came back with the next wave! My dad didn't like walking on the pebbles either.
It was very pleasant lying on the sun-loungers, which were provided by our hotel on the private beach. I liked watching the waves and being near the sea.
There are lots of areas of the beach, which are for the public, but these don't have sun loungers so many people were just lying on their towels on the pebbles. Personally, I think this would be very uncomfortable.
A lifeguard watches some of the beach. There are signs up telling you which parts of the beach are guarded and which are not so you can choose which part of the beach you want to go onto.
Judging by the number of people on the beach every day, maybe my parents and I are in the minority view that the pebble beach was not a very enjoyable experience. This was our only visit onto the actual beach, as we didn't like it very much. We did spend a lot of time walking along the promenade though.
~ On the Prom ~
On the day we arrived in Nice we were a little too early to check into the hotel so we left our bags with the hotel and crossed the road and sat on the benches, which were on the promenade. The sun was shining, the sky was cloudless so the sea looked a gorgeous blue and we just sat and watched the world pass by. It was really pleasant sitting here and it filled in the hour we needed before we could check into our room. Although we were on the prom directly across from our hotel, it was still about a 5-minute walk, as we had to walk to the crossing and wait to cross the road. There were pedestrian crossings at regular intervals along the prom and they felt relatively safe to use but sometimes it looked like the cars weren't going to stop! The length of time the green man was on didn't always seem long enough so we had to walk quite quickly.
There were hotels, shops and restaurants running parallel to the promenade. These all looked nice and I think they are in a lovely location :-)
There was a courtesy bus from our hotel, which ran back and forward to and from the centre of Nice everyday. On our penultimate day in Nice, my Mam and I went into Nice on the bus to do a little bit of souvenir shopping. We knew exactly what we wanted and which shops we were going to so we were ready in about 20 minutes. The next bus was almost an hour away as we had just missed one so we decided to walk back. We walked almost all the way along the promenade back to our hotel. This took us about 1 hour including a few stops for photos. It was very hot but as we were on the sea front the sea breeze kept cooling us off a little. We really enjoyed walking along the prom but it was quite tiring due to the distance.
There are lots of seats along the promenade, making it easy to stop for a rest! Some of the seats, on the middle of the prom, are shaded, meaning you can watch the world go by without melting in the heat! :-) I only noticed these seats when we walked along the promenade back to our hotel - I hadn't noticed them when we went by in the mini bus. The seats were full of people - they were definitely the busiest seats on the prom - so we didn't actually sit here.
When walking along the promenade you need to watch out for people on in-line skates who just come whizzing past you. Also, despite there being a cycle track alongside the footpath there was sometimes bikes on the pedestrian part. This didn't really spoil the experience though and once you know they are likely to be around it is reasonably easy to watch out for them.
~ Overall ~
I really enjoyed staying in Nice. The views were beautiful and the weather in this location was fantastic. It was cloudy on a couple of occasions which made the view less appealing as the sea was no longer blue :-( it didn't stay like this for long though! The promenade is a lovely place to just sit and soak up the atmosphere. It is definitely a location I would return to :-)
