Port Lympia is one of the few big-city marinas in France where you can walk out of the gate and be in a medieval old town inside five minutes. Most cities make you fight through industrial dockland and ring roads to reach anything worth seeing. Nice hands it to you. The port sits at the eastern foot of Castle Hill, the old town wraps around the western flank of that same hill, and the famous market square is a short flat stroll along the seafront. For a crew that wants a day of culture, food and a proper city without losing a sailing day to logistics, it is close to ideal.
I have based out of Lympia more than once, and the rhythm is always the same: off the boat early, up the hill for the view, down into the lanes for the market, and back aboard by mid-afternoon with the bags full.
The harbour and the short walk in
Port Lympia is Nice's working pleasure harbour, with over 500 berths used by yachts, ferries to Corsica and the local fleet. It sits in a square basin just east of Castle Hill. From the visitor berths you walk around the head of the harbour and over or around the hill into Vieux Nice; the old town proper is only a few hundred metres away.
If you are planning the arrival rather than the day ashore, the approach, the berthing and the ferry traffic in and out are covered in my dedicated guide to Nice and Port Lympia. What follows assumes you are already tied up and ready to explore on foot.
Up the castle hill first, while it is cool
Start with the climb, because the view sets up everything else and the morning light is best. The Colline du Chateau is the wooded outcrop between the port and the old town. There is no castle left to speak of, demolished centuries ago, but there are shaded paths, a man-made waterfall, and a viewpoint that gives you the single best panorama on the Riviera: the curve of the Baie des Anges with its line of pebble beach to the west, the terracotta roofs of Vieux Nice directly below, and your own harbour to the east.
The park is free and open daily, roughly 8.30am until the evening, with the gates closing earlier in winter. You can walk up from the port side in about fifteen minutes, or take the free lift from the eastern end near the harbour if the legs object. Either way, do it before the day heats up.
Down into the old town
From the hill you drop straight into the old town, a dense grid of tall ochre houses and narrow lanes where the washing hangs across the street and the light only reaches the cobbles at noon. Vieux Nice is small and made for wandering. The Place Rossetti, with its baroque cathedral and the famous Fenocchio ice cream parlour, is the heart of it. Place Rossetti is about 200 metres from the Cours Saleya, which is about 300 metres from the seafront, so nothing here is more than a few minutes' walk from anything else.
This is not a museum-piece old town that empties at night. People live here, the bakeries are real, and the cafes serve socca, the chickpea pancake that Nice and Antibes both claim. Eat it hot from the pan, standing up.
Flowers and produce at the morning market
The Cours Saleya is the reason to time your stop. The long market square just behind the seafront holds a flower and produce market Tuesday to Sunday mornings, a riot of cut flowers, vegetables, olives, spices and local specialities. On Monday mornings the produce gives way to an antiques and brocante market, which is its own kind of fun if you like rummaging. Both run through the morning and pack up around lunchtime, so go early.
For a cruiser this is the provisioning stop of the trip. The vegetables are superb, the olive oil and tapenade are local, and you can fill a basket cheaply if you avoid the few stalls that exist purely for tourists. Bring cash and a strong bag.
Beyond the market: a couple of museums and a beach
Nice rewards a longer stay with two of the best small museums on the coast, both a short bus or a long walk from the port. The Matisse Museum, in a red Genoese villa up in the Cimiez hills, holds the work the painter made and kept during his long Nice years; he is buried in the monastery cemetery beside it. The Marc Chagall museum nearby holds his great cycle of biblical paintings in a building designed around them. Several of the city's municipal museums have run free or low-cost entry schemes in recent years, so it is worth checking before you pay.
Back at sea level, the Promenade des Anglais runs for several kilometres along the Baie des Anges, with its line of blue chairs facing the water. The beach is pebble, not sand, so bring something to lie on, but the swimming is good and the water is clean. After a morning of climbing and markets, an hour floating in the bay with the old town behind you is the right way to spend the heat of the day.
Where to eat, and what to try
Niçois food is its own thing, shaped by the city's long history as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia rather than France. Beyond the socca, look for pissaladiere, the onion and anchovy tart, and the small stuffed vegetables called petits farcis. The lanes of the old town are full of tiny places serving these for a few euros, and they make a far better lunch than anything on the seafront. As everywhere on this coast, the rule holds: walk a hundred metres back from the water and both the prices and the cooking improve.
Stitching it into a Riviera cruise
Nice sits near the eastern end of the French Riviera, a short hop from the Italian border and well placed as a turning point or a start. Crews working west usually take in Antibes old town and the Picasso Museum next, an easy day's sail down the coast, and continue from there towards Saint-Tropez ashore. The Lerins islands off Cannes, with their monastery and vineyards, make a fine detour by sea in the same stretch.
A single shore day from Lympia runs like this for me.
- Early: up Castle Hill for the view over the Baie des Anges before the heat.
- Mid-morning: down into Vieux Nice and the Cours Saleya market, basket in hand.
- Late morning: socca and a coffee in the old lanes, a wander past Place Rossetti.
- Lunch: a plat du jour in a back-street place, well away from the seafront prices.
- Afternoon: the Promenade des Anglais for the famous blue chairs, then back to the boat.
One practical point about Port Lympia: it is a busy commercial harbour as well as a marina, with the Corsica ferries coming and going on a fixed schedule and a no-go zone around their berths. Watch the timetable when you plan your own movements in and out, and listen on the working channel, because a 100-metre ferry swinging in the basin is not something you want to share the entrance with. The capitainerie will tell you the ferry times when you check in. Once ashore, none of that matters, and the walk into town is as easy as any in France.
What I value about Nice is the lack of friction. There is no bus to catch, no taxi haggling, no long walk through dockland. You step off the pontoon at Port Lympia and the old town, the market and the best view on the coast are all within a fifteen-minute walk. For a city stop on a cruise, that simplicity is worth a great deal.
