Villefranche-sur-Mer

Villefranche-sur-Mer is a small beach resort and residential town (population 5,000 in 2017) on the French Riviera. The deep water harbour is home to Mediterranean cruise boats, whose tenders routinely disgorge several thousand passengers on organised trips to nearby Eze Village and Monaco. It sports excellent restaurants and a coarse sandy beach much favoured over Nice's stony bay. Convenient harbour car parking attracts visitors from Monaco and along the Riviera. The Citadelle st Elme dates back to antiquity and the town offers easy access to the millionaires peninsula of St Jean Cap Ferrat.

Get in
The route by car from the Basse Corniche down to the old town and waterfront is very tricky in the high season due to the narrow streets and heavy traffic, coaches etc. When you arrive you will also find it difficult and expensive to park. The best way to get to Villefranche is by taking a TER train. They run along the coastal towns between Nice and Monaco, making several stops along the way. Tickets are very cheap (for an adult from Nice to Villefranche is €2.10) and can be purchased and then used at any time, unlike the more strict TGV in France. Trains run everyday and arrive in Villefranche approximately every 20 minutes, depending on the time of day. The station is in the centre and an easy walk to the old town.

Get around
The town is best seen on foot. It is a relatively easy bicycle ride from Nice--there and on to Cap Ferrat and back to Nice should only take 5 hours max.Stick to the lower road

Do
The Beach Villefranche is a great day trip from Nice because of its proximity, size and beach. It's still not a fine sand, but much better than the smooth stones that make up Nice's beaches. Additionally, because the town is quite small, there are next to no tourists clogging up the quaint, waterfront town. With this said the beach is very busy in the high season and very narrow so space is limited.

Buy
The town is full of small shops, mostly catering for the tourist trade but also plenty offering the usual services for the permanent population. The tourist shops are very expensive. There is a food market on Saturday mornings and an antiques market on Sundays.

Eat
Villefranche has no shortage of good restaurants though very few if you are on a tight budget. the ones on the waterfront are the best known and pricey but you can find more reasonable ones back into the town.



Self-catering

If you're staying self catering in Villefranche it's worth being prepared. There are two small supermarkets in the Old Town and one on the main road and they are about double UK prices and quite poorly stocked. There are two good boulangeries and a couple of vegetable shops. There is a butcher shop at Place de la Paix, where you will also find a small collection of local shops including boulangerie, fruit shop, pharmacy, and cafe/newspaper shop. These are local shops, they are not glamourised for tourists but have their own innate charm. There is a small fish stand on the quay in the morning and one that appears sporadically up near the boulangerie at Place de la Paix. It is very tough to try and find high quality produce of the kind you would expect to get in the inland provencal towns as there is basically no traiteur. If you have no car you are rather at the mercy of the shops mentioned above and so life will be expensive.