The south of France has been a Shangri-La for the English for more than a century. When I was a child in England smart people would refer to their summer 'on the Riviera', which naturally referred to the French bit of the coast, not the Italian. Its topography has a definite effect on the climate: the Alps come right down to coast and ensure that any cold winds blowing from the North are kept away. The average temperatures both in summer and winter are the same as places much further south.
This simple fact has ensured that people from dreary northern climates have made the French Riviera a holiday spot. The locals are now adept at removing money from passing tourists. They do it elegantly, Gallicly and efficiently. Somehow they manage to convey the impression that they're doing you a favour whilst they do it. Experiencing that special kind of French hospitality is now easy for the Irish, since flying direct to Nice from Dublin is now an option.

Nice is the biggest city on the Riviera. From here all the other famous names are within reach: to the west is Cannes, San Tropez, Cap D'Antibes and Juan Les Pins, to the east is Villefranche and Monaco, and inland you can find St. Paul. I'm sensitive to the fact that that the French natives of this part of France - Provence - are different from those in other parts of France, since up to the mid 1800s this was Italy. I won't bore you with European history, but the man whose actions reunited Italy and through his actions indirectly ceded Nice to France was Garbaldi, who also happened to be from Nice.

In Place Garibaldi in Nice you can see his statue overlooking the traffic mayhem. You'll also notice that all the the street signs in Nice are written both in French and in Nizzarda, the language of Nice - a mix of Genoese, Corsican and Sardinian. Place Garibaldi is as good as anywhere to start your gastronomic tour of Nice. On one corner behind Garibaldi's statue you'll find the Cafe de Turin, a wonderland for people who enjoy seafood. You can buy oysters here in any one of maybe six qualities, and oysters is what I ate here.

If you walk from the Cafe de Turin towards to sea - you'll be going downhill - you'll be walking through the old city, full of little alleys and stuffed with shops selling all kinds of goodies. I defy you to make this walk and buy nothing at all. Before you hit the seafront - named after its tourist heritage of the 1800s 'Promenade des Anglais' - you'll hit the road that's parallel to it, which is where the flower market is. Not far away, on the Italian side of the border, is San Remo, where most of Europe's flowers are grown for the Dutch markets.

Where the flower market comes to an end the road narrows, but it's worth exploring. This is the road on which Nice's Opera House stands and it's also home to a number of restaurants. Most guide books will tell you to try La Petite Maison, but in my opinion unless you enjoy mediocre food and being treated like something the cat brought in, don't go there. Perhaps fifty yards further on is Terre des Truffes, a really wonderful shop and restaurant that specialises in truffles. You can eat fabulous truffle food for very reasonable money - lunch and wine won't cost you more than €20 unless you're careless.

From here you're about twenty yards from the Promenade des Anglais, and if you walk its length you can enjoy one of thr Riviera's great vistas. As you walk eastwards the Promenade rises at a promentory and just around this corner you come to the very splendid war memorial, a huge arch carved into the living rock of the promontory of Montfort itself.

Just a little further on you come to one of Nice's better Italian restaurants, L'Allegro, where the family of owners are wonderfully hospitable. Good food, too, and at reasonable money. Incidentally, reasonable money on the continent means about two-thirds or half Irish prices. Right in front of L'Allegro, across the road, is the old port. If you suffer from envy don't walk around it. It's here that many of the Riviera's smartest motor yachts moor. Some are frankly wild excesses of money and no style, but some are elegant, refined, distinctly fanciable and very, very big.

Walk right around the old port to the other side - the Quai des Docks - and you get to the marginally seedy part of dockland. At night all manner of human vice can be found here. I really enjoyed the cafe/bars on this short strip - L'Oree de Port, Les Pecheurs for fresh fish and La Goelette. Sometimes you can find live music at night in the bars: I thought I'd stumbled into a French movie one night. Characters straight out of central casting were dancing on the tiny dance floor, Gitane smoke permeated the air - where's the French Michael Martin? - the drink flowed and couples found one another. If this scene had taken place in black and white I might have expected Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Tritignant or Michel Piccolit to walk in.