Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Corder on a beautiful sunny afternoon in well.

Let me just say that I am hoping that in the course of the next six or seven minutes, I might run into Sir Elton John.

Now, I'm not counting on it.

I'm certainly not stalking the great man,

but he was spotted here yesterday.

And so where is here?

Well, it's Villiers-Franche.

Now, it's a place that inexplicably

I have failed to visit during my many years on the road.

And the reason that's sort of surprising to me

is because I've been to Nice,

which is directly across the huge towering escarpment with pines all the way along the ridge above me.

Nice, of course, the gateway to the beautiful Coat d'Azu.

Indeed, the airport is called Nice Coat d'Azu, and it's wonderfully accessible.

It's probably, no, definitely the most accessible place on the Mediterranean.

Bonjour. On the whole Mediterranean from the UK, multiple flights from many places.

And I love every aspect of Nice, not least because starting at the airport you can either walk into town

or indeed use one of the many bikes that you are invited to cycle on and there's a stand. It's the usual city bikes like the London Santander

cycles and oh there's a dock at La Marmot that's the name of the house beautiful sandy-coloured

villa lots of shades and he's looking at me quite quizzically as though he would quite

like me to move. Okay, I will. My pettisha. There we are. I'm astonishing him with my, oh,

and look, there's a British registered Mercedes, very up market one there.

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