We have been told that the French Riviera is a beautiful place, but we weren’t prepared for this amazing spot.

We roll into Nice after one of the slowest journeys we’ve ever experienced. The train drivers union in France has taken strike action and are slowing trains to a standstill every fifteen minutes. It added two hours to our commute, doubling the trip time, but we are thankful we got here.

Our accommodation location is nice and handy to the train station as well as the promenade and waterfront. But a mix up with key availability meant it was another hour and a half delay. We write off the rest of the day and enjoy dinner and wine to reset and focus on what to see tomorrow.

Breakfast the next morning is at Copenhagen Coffee Lab where they served up great coffee and probably the best avo toast we have had in a long time.

Fuelled up, it’s off to the Promenade for a walk along the sea front.

Our first impressions leave us gob smacked. It is everything we had expected and a bit more. The views up and down the waterfront are straight out of a travel guide. There are few people at this early hour, 8:30am, as the area doesn’t seem to wake up until well after 10am, so we have the opportunity to take some photos without annoying others.

What we do realise is the volume of law enforcement officers both on the waterfront and in rapid response boats in the water. There is also a menacing looking naval boat cruising up and down. It turns out the United Nations Ocean Conference is being held in Nice this week and security has stepped up considerably. That unfortunately means access to the harbour area is locked off and we can only go as far as the macrame art installation, yes you read that right, so we just have to satisfy ourselves with taking it easy along the waterfront and around the market places.

The architecture gets me in every time. There is thought put into the older buildings as opposed to the 1970s and 1980s when it was all about bang for your buck.

We owe ourselves some downtime as we have walked a huge amount of kilometres already this trip but not before squeezing in two more incredible churches. First is Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas de Nice which has colourful tiled domes then onto Basilique Notre Dame de l’Assomption before heading back to the waterfront to enjoy a beer on the beach overlooking the Riviera. (I never thought I’d hear myself say those words, but here we are sipping our afternoon away in awesome surroundings.)

We leave Nice thinking we could have added two more days here as there is much more to see. We loved our first trip here and maybe there will be a second one in the future.

Next stop is in Genoa, Italy.