Menton Beaches
Orange Festival, France
Cannes Pictures or Nice Carnival
Menton and its kid-friendly beach, is about as far southwest as you can get in France.
Menton is a charming, relaxed town 30 minutes by train from Nice, between Monaco and Italy. It's not a wild and exciting party place like Nice, nor as overbuilt and expensive as its neighbour Monaco, but does offer a couple of decent but slightly hard beaches of sand mixed with tiny pebbles and backed by the requisite beach bars and restaurants, some great exotic gardens (jardins), a wacky annual festival La Fête du Citron, fine Old Town climbing the hill and a spectacularly pleasant micro-climate.
The concrete supports (just visible in the centre of the photo above) belong to the autoroute into Italy - which is just minutes away.
Get to Menton via the A8 autoroute. The nearest airport is Nice.
Menton's less protected beach on the Baie du Soleil.
Menton celebrates its spectacular micro-climate - that permits it to grow fine crops of oranges and lemons - with the annual Orange Festival.
The Orange Festival is shorter than Nice's Carnival, at only one week including the usual mad, orange-heavy parade and samba-ish dress codes, though...
...aaaarghh! Attack of the giant aphids! Scary one, guys.
Cleverly the Menton council schedules the cheerful Orange Festival to coincide with Nice's Carnival, so visitors can easily take in both events without breaking a sweat. Stay in Nice - where there is way more accommodation and other facilities, then hop on a train to Menton for one of the procession days, or rent a car if you're feeling lucky in the parking lottery.
As for Menton's town generally, well it's got some goodies worth a look. This one's the covered market...
...these are town centre offices,...
...and traditional town centre housing. Next, Nice.
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Antibes | Juans-Les-Pins | Grasse | Saint-Paul de Vence | Eze | Cannes | Monaco
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