St. Paul de Vence... enough for a day?

[ckdsweet]

Leaving on Serenade of the Seas from Barcelona on August 9th. Our initial plans were to spend the day in Monte Carlo and Nice, but after looking into it more, bf and I have decided to go to St. Paul de Vence, via train and bus. Not worried about getting lost as I do speak French, but I am worried about the time the connections will take.

 

We tender in Cannes and are there from 9-5 so I am a little worried about time. so I was wondering if there is enough to do in St. Paul de Vence to make that our only place to spend the day?

 

Other options would be to combine it with Nice or a visit to Antibes maybe? We could just use any remaining time to explore Cannes...I want to get the most out of our day and not spend all the time travelling. So, is St. Paul de Vence worth spending the day in or should it be combined with something else?

[Hlitner]

You are not going to have as much time as you think since it can be quite a while until you even get off the ship (more then an hour) and depending on connections at Cagnes sur Mer (where you can transfer from train to the #400 bus) it can easily take you more then an hour to get to St Paul de Vence (once you get on the train in Cannes). The 400 bus does not run very often (about every 45 min) which can cost you a lot of time waiting and you also need to factor the 25-30 min walk from the tender pier to the Cannes train station. As to St Paul de Vence (one of our favorite places in this part of France) you can easily spend 3 hours (or more) if you enjoy browsing the galleries and shops and have a nice lunch. My advice is go directly to St Paul and then see how it goes. If you make it back to the train in Cagnes sur Mer with lots of extra time you can easily hop off in Antibes and spend some time in that town. Another option is to get yourself back to Cannes and take some time enjoying that city. The walk between train station and tender pier can take you through the best parts of town.

 

Hank

P.S. One reason (among many) that we prefer to rent a car in Cannes is that we can drive to St Paul de Vence in about 45 min.

[mlbcruiser]

Are you totally against driving? We happened to dock in Cannes 3 yrs. ago during the Cannes film festival, when this little city was quite packed w/people! We had arranged to rent a car in advance and drove to St. Paul de Vence, which we fell in love with! Driving was quite easy and there was clearly marked parking near the entry area to this old village. Like the other poster said, it's easy to spend 3 hrs. there. Esp. if you decide to have lunch and/or enjoy shopping for things that are not quite so tourist-tacky as usually found. The shops are more interesting than in many touristy villages. We wanted to make sure we found our way back to Cannes in plenty of time, so didn't stop off on the way back. So we still had at least 2 hrs. before our ship left once we returned to Cannes. It holds it's own as an interesting enough place to walk around in with small restaurants and so forth on the many streets leading up from the port. You will LOVE SPDV!