Côte d'Azur. We'll take you down the main shopping street, show you some of the side

lanes and do a little winetasting. You'll obviously take time to explore Nice’

s main commercial Street, Avenue Jean Medicin, stretching about 10 blocks from Place Massena

north to the train station and packed with many boutiques and anchored at the lower end

by the large department store, Galleries Lafayette. You can see on the map of downtown how the

main street goes right through the middle, just near the old town and the busy shopping

hub of Place Massena, and we will also take you over to another great pedestrian street

Rue de France. There is a convenient tram service in nice

running along the main avenue, practically from the beach and all the way to the train

station and beyond, which makes it very easy to get from one end of town to the other.

So it’s really not too critical that you stay at a hotel down by the waterfront but

of course it is more pleasant to be down by the shore.

Riding along on this new tram is a very smooth experience - the tracks are still quite level

so you have a nice view of downtown passing by as you look out the windows.

The tram is convenient because it's right at street level so it's easy to just walk

right on, and there are stops every few blocks, so it's easy to catch. And trams like this

have become quite popular once again in Europe, it's sort of a rebirth of an old idea.

A lot of money has been spent by the government to upgrade and improve the city with the new

tram, the new parks, really enhancing the quality of life.

Here's a quick flash back to the year 2006 showing the amount of construction work necessary

to create this tram line down the main street. It's all finished now.

It's really quite wonderful to see how this main street has been transformed in recent

years by the tram. All the automobiles of been removed, except service vehicles. Sidewalks

widened. Now it's a great place for pedestrians and bicycles and people, and the tram running

down the middle. When locals are referring to the street they

don't even call it Avenue Jean Medicin. They just say the Avenue because it's by far the

primary shopping street of Nice. Place Massena is a great hub of the city,

straddling between the old town and the new town and adjacent to it are beautiful arcades

of Galleries Lafayette and other major stores. Just beyond that central square is a remarkable

new park called the Promenade du Paillon. It's 1.2 km in length and it's a result of

nearly 10 years of urban redevelopment in the heart of Nice. They ripped down an old

bus station, they remove various other buildings and they put in this beautiful park with the

mirrored, reflecting fountain – it's kind of a trick fountain, you can walk through

it if you dare. It covers over 3000 square meters with the beautiful trees and green

lawns all around it, cafe services. It's a great place for the families, and it's open

from early in the morning till late at night – very safe and clean. It's well protected,

there is a lot of staff around, public facilities. It's really a sterling example of urban renewal.

The park is also open in the evening, so it's a great place for the families to come out

after work, before dinner, enjoying the playground facilities.

The park is right next to Place Massena, so it is really easy to get back into the shopping

part of town from here, it just takes a couple minutes, and you're walking along this beautiful

arcaded street toward the lower end of the Avenue, and there are more shops tucked away

in these arcades – that great department store Galeries Lafayette, the largest department

store chain you find throughout France. The Italian style architecture of these arcades,

with their red ocher construction, harkens back to the days a century ago when Nice was

more Italian and French. From here it's only a 2-minute walk south to the beach, or turn

around and plunge back into the downtown shopping arena.

This colorful shop called Pylones was founded in France in 1985. It's a gift shop with a

variety of colorful and animated objects and innovative designs, and it's been a big hit.

You see it now in just about every city in France.

The Basilica of Notre Dame is the largest church in Nice. It was completed in 1868 in

the Gothic style but it's not the cathedral, which is in the old town.

In the midst of this busy street the church was pretty empty but right across the street

there is another kind of cathedral for shopping and that was packed.

This urban shopping mall on the main street of Nice offers 100 shops in a very stylish

setting. Of course you'll also find restaurants bars

and cafés inside Nice Etoile. It's wonderful that this modern multilevel

shopping mall is right in the heart of downtown so it complements the existing street-level

retail rather than luring people outside of the city.

Back out on the main street we ran into a little political demonstration. That's a common

sight throughout Europe. When exploring the downtown of Nice don't

limit yourself to the main avenue. There are interesting streets along both sides.

Good example is this lovely pedestrian zone in the newer part of Nice. This is rue d’France.

It used to be the main street of the city about 100 years ago and it's still one of

the most important streets. Fortunately it’s been converted into a pedestrian mall with

a lot of shops, restaurants and there's some hotels scattered along the street, and it'll

lead you right back towards Place Massena. It runs parallel to the shore about four blocks

inland - it's a wonderful street. Boulevard Victor Hugo is a main road with

many affordable hotels that cuts right through the central area.

This is the kind of really local and authentic neighborhood that's often overlooked by typical

guidebooks and video tours, but this is really part of the heart and soul of Nice. This is

where locals hang out, where they go shopping, where they get a bite to eat, go to the café,

have a beer, which makes it a good place for shopping and for people-watching.

It's so amazing how these pedestrian streets have transformed the cities of Europe. Just

a decade ago these kinds of streets would've been filled with cars and trucks in pollution

and noise, and the movement swept through the continent to convert these little streets

in the heart of the town into pedestrian malls. But over on the east side of downtown they

still have streets with cars and narrow sidewalks, and it's exciting. It's hustle bustle neighborhood

– again, not that many tourists over here, but you should come over and take a look just

a few blocks east of the main avenue. You've got lively streets and shops everywhere,

sidewalk cafés, views back at Notre Dame. As you walk along you even get a view of the

national theater, a large modern building, and other side streets that wind around - it's

a great place to explore. There's a wonderful Matisse Museum located

in a park slightly away from the center of town, a little too far to walk to, but you

can easily reach it by public bus or just take a taxi. Matisse lived in the city of

Nice for many years and created some of his finest paintings here. You might be able to

visualize some of those scenes that were painted from his room looking out onto the beautiful

blue sea, with the bright colors of the south of France and Provence.

Just next to the museum, they love to play petanque, or boule. The idea is to get your

ball near the little red ball and to knock the other balls as far away as possible. This

is the national sport of France, especially here in the south of France, rivaling only

perhaps football or as we say soccer. It's believed that some variation of this

game has been played for several thousand years and you can see why - it's a casual

friendly game, it's a chance to socialize and have a little fun.

Next to the Matisse Museum are some major Roman ruins: a small amphitheater, housing

foundations and a small archaeology museum that remind us the Romans had a major presence

here 2000 years ago. Several other Nice museums will compete for

your attention: the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the Chagall Museum with the world's

largest collection of the artist's works. France is a wine country. There's no question

France produces the best wine in the world. And there's something special about it, it

becomes a ritual, in the case of the Beaujolais Nouveau it's an annual event. On the third

Thursday of November every year it's the official release of Beaujolais Nouveau, which is a

fresh young wine. It is in the bottle eight weeks after it's been harvested so it's very

fresh and very young, and it's kind about pink purple color. And frankly it's not the

best wine of France. It's kind of raw - you can get much better Bordeauxs that are aged

for five or 10 years - but this is a fun thing because the wine shops celebrate with the

release of Beaujolais Nouveau with free tastings. So people come down and line up on the sidewalk

and gather around, and this is great fun, free wine.

A national holiday of sorts, celebrated around the world because these cases and container

loads are shipped everywhere, and it's a special day when Beaujolais Nouveau arrives.

They sell 1 million cases of this Beaujolais Nouveau all around the world. Half of it is

consumed within France. It's the biggest wine party ever on the day that it's released.

A wine that's been harvested, the grapes have been harvested this year, September, and so

it's a great party every year in France, on the third Thursday of every November, comes

out the Beaujolais Nouveau. These are the new ones. This is the new one so it's vintage

2013, as it says on the bottle. And so forbidden by the law to open it before today. Really?

By law? Oh yeah, better not. It's been a good year? I think it's been a good year. 2013,

was a good year. 2013. Banana, raspberry, strawberry even sometimes, and that's a classic

Beaujolais Nouveau. So, today is Beaujolais Nouveau Day? Yes,

I like it. Was it a good year? Yeah, it's a good year, thank you.

After such a busy evening with all that walking through the old town and sampling the Beaujolais,

got to get some rest and then up and at 'em the next day.

I was out quite early for a walk right after breakfast and was surprised to find so many

people out. The café was alive, there were customers sitting around, this is most unusual,

and the lighting was beautiful. It seemed like too good to be real... it almost seemed

like, wait a minute, it is a movie shoot. Yeah these guys have got their equipment and

cameras, and they're working hard at about 7:30 in the morning.

It's almost inevitable if you spend enough time in these beautiful places you're going

to run into film productions. Maybe they're shooting a commercial, perhaps it's an episode

for a television program, maybe it's a feature film, there might even be a famous star around

somewhere. But it's best just to kind of stay out of their way. You take a look, you can

take a few pictures if you like, but just don't cause any problems.

Another surprise this early was to see so much action at a pub. Well they drank a lot

of beer last night apparently. They've got to restock all those barrels.

Well folks it's finally time to leave Nice. We've enjoyed a long visit here. We've shown

you all around the town, the old town, the downtown. We've also taken you to nearby cities

in other movies, over to Cannes and Antibes, St-Paul, over to Vence, Monaco all around

this amazing Côte d'Azur. Now we're heading out, we're taking taxi over the train station

and we will continue on our merry journey to the next destination which is going to

be the Italian Riviera – were heading for Cinque Terre.

It's a pretty long train ride from Nice to Santa Margheritta. That will be our base for

exploring Cinque Terre, and Portofino and other sites of that area.

The train makes a brief stop in Monaco, one of the cleanest train stations you'll ever

see. We have a big movie about Monaco you've got to take a look at. It's the world's richest

country and in many ways an ideal model of urban planning, but that's another story.

And then we carry on along the coast with some beautiful views of the Mediterranean

Sea out the window. We've got a lot more movies about Provence

and the South of France. Take a look at our YouTube channel.