When my wife and I wanted a week away with no children, no schedule and no agenda beyond good food and clear water, we chartered a small yacht on the Riviera and pottered. No miles to make, no gales to dodge, just the two of us and a coast that has been seducing visitors since the 1920s. If you are planning a romantic cruise cote dazur for two rather than a hard-charging passage, the rules are different: short legs, late starts, dinners ashore and a willingness to pay for the odd glamorous night in port. This is the route we sailed, and the small extravagances that were worth it.
We started at Nice and worked west to the gulf of Saint-Tropez over seven unhurried days. You could run it either direction. The point is the dawdling.
Setting the pace from Nice
Nice is an easy place to begin. Port Lympia sits right under the old town, so you step off the boat into a maze of ochre alleys, flower markets and tiny restaurants. We provisioned light on purpose, because the joy of this trip is eating ashore. A morning at the Cours Saleya market for peaches, rose and a wedge of pissaladiere is a better start than any supermarket run.
Slip the lines late. There is no reason to be at sea before lunch on a romantic week, and the afternoon thermal breeze makes for a gentler sail anyway. From Nice the first short hop west takes you into the prettiest bays on the whole coast.
Villefranche and the Cap Ferrat bays
Just around the corner lies the deep blue amphitheatre of Villefranche-sur-Mer, one of the deepest natural harbours in the Mediterranean and a favourite of cruise ships and yachts alike. Anchor off the old town in settled weather and you have a front-row view of the pastel waterfront. Next door, the wooded peninsula of Cap Ferrat hides a string of calm coves. The guide to Cap Ferrat and the Villefranche bays maps out which anchorages stay sheltered when the wind goes round, which matters because an evening swell can ruin a candlelit dinner aboard.
We took a buoy off the Cap and rowed ashore for a coastal walk in the late afternoon light. That hour, with the villas glowing on the headland and nobody else around, was the most romantic of the week and cost nothing.
Drifting west towards the Lerins
The next phase of the trip runs west past Antibes and Cannes towards the Iles de Lerins, the two small islands lying just off Cannes. Sainte-Marguerite, the larger, is a fragrant pine-covered nature reserve with no town, no traffic and a handful of mooring buoys in turquoise water. The smaller Saint-Honorat is still home to a working monastery whose monks make and sell their own wine. The piece on the Lerins islands anchorage off Cannes explains the buoy fields and the protected zones, which you must respect.
We anchored off Sainte-Marguerite for a night, swam off the stern at sunset, and ate a simple dinner of market produce in the cockpit. After the glitter of Cannes across the water, the quiet was the luxury.
The glamorous night you should budget for
A romantic week deserves at least one night tied stern-to in a famous harbour, dressed up, eating somewhere with a tablecloth. Saint-Tropez is the obvious candidate, and it is worth doing once even though it costs. A modest 12-metre boat can pay 80 to 120 euros a night here in high season, and the superyacht rates run to thousands; the bigger picture on cote d'azur marina fees is genuinely eye-opening if you have only ever paid Atlantic-coast prices.
If Saint-Tropez is full, as it often is in July and August, the lagoon village of Port-Grimaud across the gulf is calmer, prettier in its own way, and far kinder on the wallet. You can water-taxi across for dinner and still feel you have done the glamour.
Anchoring, the seagrass and the rules
Half the pleasure of this coast is dropping the hook in a clear cove and having lunch with your feet in the water. The catch is the seagrass. Posidonia meadows are protected and anchoring on them is now restricted across the Riviera, with eco-moorings replacing free anchoring in many bays. Before you cruise, get to grips with the posidonia anchoring ban in France and the wider cote d'azur anchoring rules for 2026, because the patrols are active in season and the fines are not trivial.
A few things that made our week:
- Late starts, early stops. We rarely sailed more than 15 nautical miles in a day and were anchored with a glass in hand by mid-afternoon.
- One marina night for laundry, showers and a proper dinner; the rest at anchor for the romance and the silence.
- A small folding paddleboard. Worth its stowage for the dawn glide round an empty bay.
- Sundowners on the foredeck, every single night. It is the whole point.
Stretching east towards Monaco
If a week feels generous and you want more glamour, the coast east of Nice rewards it. Beaulieu-sur-Mer hides one of the prettiest small marinas on the Riviera, all palm trees and old money, and from there it is a short hop to the principality of Monaco itself. Berthing in Monaco is eye-wateringly expensive and the waiting list is the stuff of legend, but you can anchor off Cap Martin or duck into Menton, the last French marina before Italy, for a fraction of the cost and still spend a day ashore in Monte-Carlo.
This eastern arm is busier and more built-up than the bays around Cap Ferrat, so we tend to treat it as a single day excursion rather than a place to linger. Go for the spectacle, anchor where it is calm, and retreat west to the quiet coves to sleep. A romantic trip is undone faster by a rolly, sleepless night in a glitzy harbour than by anything else.
Timing the week
The Cote d'Azur is busiest and most expensive in July and August, when the anchorages fill and the marinas turn boats away. For a couple, the sweet spot is late May, June or September. The water is warm enough to swim, the days are long, the restaurants are open but not heaving, and berth prices ease off either side of peak. We have done this week in the second half of September with flat seas, empty anchorages and 24-degree water, and it felt like having the coast to ourselves.
Watch the weather all the same. The Riviera is gentler than the open Gulf of Lion, but a summer thunderstorm can blow up fast over the warm sea, and an evening anchorage that was glassy at dinner can turn lumpy by midnight. Pick anchorages with shelter from more than one direction and you will sleep soundly.
How to think about the route
This is not really an itinerary, it is a mood. Nice, Villefranche, the Lerins and the gulf of Saint-Tropez are the beads; the string is however long you want to make it. If you fancy stretching east instead, towards the principality and back, the Monaco to Saint-Tropez cruise covers the grander end, and for couples chartering rather than sailing their own, the cote d'azur charter itinerary for one week is a sensible framework to adapt.
One practical note for couples who do not own a boat: chartering for two on the Riviera is easy and need not break the bank out of peak season. A small, manageable yacht of 32 to 38 feet is plenty for two and far cheaper to berth than a big charter cat, and it slips into the pretty little harbours that turn the larger boats away. Sort out which licence you need before you book, decide honestly whether you want to do all the sailing yourselves or split the trip with a skipper for the trickier days, and keep the plan loose. The whole point of a romantic week is that nothing is fixed except dinner.
We came home tanned, well fed and a little smug. The Cote d'Azur has a reputation for flash and crowds, and in August it earns it. But sail it slowly, for two, with the engine off and the anchor down in a quiet cove, and it is still one of the most romantic places to put a small boat anywhere in Europe.
