7 Days, The Cote D'azur & Corsica

The French Riviera is synonymous with beaches, splendid scenery and fascinating people, and nowhere is this more evident than in Cannes. Artists, writers, actors and jet-setters from the world over come here to enjoy the elegant boutiques, art galleries, extravagant restaurants and hotels along the Cote d’Azur.

And of course, the annual Cannes Film Festival draws the creme de la creme of trendsetting celebrities. Nearby is the town of Grasse, known for its fields of fragrant blossoms and perfume factory, and further along is St. Paul-de-Vence, a fortified medieval town perched high atop a hill. It was here that painter Marc Chagall lived and was inspired to create many of his Expressionist masterpieces.

Nice (nês), city (1990 pop. 342,439), capital of Alpes-Maritimes dept., SE France, on the Mediterranean Sea. This famous French Riviera resort relies mostly on tourists, but electronics and other manufactures are important. Nice probably originated as a Greek colony in the 5th cent. B.C. Sardinia held it from 1814 to 1860, when a plebiscite gave it to France.

It lies just west of Monaco and enjoys moderate weather during the winter months and lovely warm weather in the Spring and Summer. Whether you are just driving through or staying, Nice is a very nice place to stay! Many great hotels and restaurants are to be found along the coastline and in the surrounding hills overlooking the Mediterranean.

Rome wasn’t built in a day…but you can tour it in just over 10 hours. A teeming anthill of humanity and antiquity intermingled with awful traffic jams, Rome grew up on the Tiber (“Fiume Tevere”) among seven low hills that rise from the river’s soggy eastern banks. It’s a city of many peeling layers of history, of which the bottom layer–that of the earliest Roman centuries–is the most interesting and still astonishingly whole. The hub of this layer is the Palatine Hill, the Forum, the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus.

On the western bank is the Citta Vaticana, the independent papal city where the Pope blesses pilgrims from all over the world. Neighboring Trastevere (“Across the Tiber”) is a mix of Roman, Greek and Jewish subcultures, great for little restaurants and nightlife. Further north on the other bank is “vecchia Roma,” medieval Rome of the Pantheon and Piazza Navona; Renaissance Rome is centered south of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Commercial Rome is the city of the Via del Corso, the Piazza del Popolo, the controversial Victor Emmanuel monument and finally the Stazione Termini, the nexus for all trains and roads from Rome.

St. Tropez lies 45 miles southwest of Nice and has a population of about 6,000. But no introduction is needed for what is perhaps the world’s best known and most fashionable resort on the Riviera. Immerse yourself in the splendid scenery of the Cote d’Azur with an excursion to the hilltop villages of Gassin and Il Ramatuelle, and the new town of Port Grimaud, built to resemble an old Mediterranean fishing village.