Going on French leave

A storm blew in off the Mediterranean on Halloween and the streets of Nice ran rivers. The bay boiled, the wind bent palm trees almost double along the promenade, and tourists scuttled for cover. Even on the French Riviera you can wish for gumboots.

A couple of days later, in Menton on the Italian border, sun-soakers were on the beach as workers began repairing the sea wall. And you could see snow on the Southern Alps. This famous stretch of France's southeast coast has it all in late autumn.

The French like to holiday here, but 60 per cent of visitors are from overseas.

The tourism office offers an explanation: "April and May are the favourite months for the Germans, who are just as happy to come in October as in July ... Italians fill the hotels for Christmas and New Year and travel en masse in August ... June is popular with Americans ... Belgians and Scandinavians favour July ... there are nearly as many Spaniards in spring as in summer."

What they are saying, I think, is that people come to the Riviera, aka the Cote d'Azur, all year round. Except, perhaps, for the really stormy period reserved for Kiwis.

It is renowned for the sunshine: Nice and Cannes bask in close to 3000 hours a year (Parisians get a bit more than half that), and the 68,000 population of Europe's film capital more than doubles in summer.

Yet it was as winter resorts that these seaside cities flourished. From the mid-19th to early-20th centuries, a period they call the Belle Epoque, Europe's royalty and aristocracy, from Russia to England, were drawn to the mild winters, and some of that high society's opulence remains in palatial villas and hotels.

Some hotels, such as the grandiose Excelsior Regina in Nice, where Queen Victoria and retinue occupied a wing for several seasons, are now apartments.

Numerous other artists, including Renoir and Picasso, made their homes on the Riviera. They say there is something special about the light, and even in autumn the sky can look particularly blue, although while walking in the cities one's gaze may be more often in the opposite direction: the French are fond of dogs but apparently unfamiliar with the poop-scoop.

Historic hotels still operating include the pink-domed Negresco on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice's seafront boulevard, although this one is as much an art gallery and museum.

Suites boast furniture of various King Louis periods and in some corridors the ribboned-off chairs are for admiring only.

Works by Picasso and Cocteau adorn the walls, and dominating the Salon Louis XIV is a painting of the Sun King by Rigaud (the hotel says the only comparable portraits are in the Palace of Versailles and the Louvre).

The Negresco proudly provides a long list of past guests, from Courtney Love to Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill to Benny Hill.

The celebrity guest list from the Hotel Martinez in Cannes reads like an all-time Hollywood Who's Who.

Alfred Hitchcock stayed here, and one can imagine him peering down the well of the magnificent marble seven-storey spiral staircase and visualising Vertigo.

The 450-room Martinez is the largest of four grand hotels along the Croisette on Cannes seafront. You can kick back in a two-bedroom penthouse suite atop this art deco palace, with a bathroom as big as a lounge and a terrace overlooking the Med ... provided you can find $20,000 a night in the summer high season.

A walk away from the seaside glitz in Nice, Cannes and Menton are the winding, narrow streets, high houses, steep stone steps and arches of the old towns.

Residents opening their shuttered windows to hang out washing don't seem to mind tourists on their doorsteps. Their labyrinths are open to anyone who cares to get lost in them.

There is some range of architecture on the Riviera: medieval to McDonald's, with baroque splendour and grotesque apartment blocks in between. With so much cosmopolitan history a visitor can take any number of snapshots.

A striking one is of St Nicholas, Nice's onion-domed Russian cathedral, where the congregation still stand - for hours as their ancestors did - in a far-flung piece of homeland. Another is of the stunningly surreal Nice library: a square building placed atop a sculpture of neck and shoulders.

And so to the bars, where blond Amstel and Kronenbourg are the most popular beers, and cognac and armagnac the best-loved brandies. A man on a mission to establish the precise differences between these two aromatic spirits should choose a bar not far from his bed.

And the restaurants, where the cuisine is influenced by Italy and Provence (some locals will tell you the Riviera is part of Provence; others will insist it is not).

Everywhere are local specialties, such as the nicoise dishes with trademark garlic, anchovies, beans, tomatoes and olives.

Silvery olive groves, some centuries-old, abound throughout the region and the oil is ubiquitous in the cooking, giving Provencal recipes their fruity flavour.

The Palais des Olives in Grasse, near Cannes, offers numerous variations of olive oil, each tasting surprisingly different. Also for sale are olive oil hand cream, lip balm, liquid soap, foam bath ...

Eating out is at basic brasseries or the finest of restaurants. The Chantecler at the Negresco and Palme D'Or at the Martinez are acclaimed. Then there's the Moulin de Mougin of nouvelle cuisine pioneer Roger Verge, and Jacques Chibois' La Bastide Saint-Antoine at Grasse.

At the latter a seven-course feast included appetisers, dishes of lobster, boletus, John Dory, pigeon, cheeses (several dozen) and desserts. Magnifique ... and enough, already.

The ingredients are at the markets for those who want to knock up something themselves. Nice, Cannes, Menton, Antibes, Grasse and Cagnes-sur-Mer have gatherings of shops and stalls full of fruit, vegetables, seafood, beef, lamb and poultry (heads on).

Or just pick up a camembert, runny and ready to eat, and a baguette at a supermarket for a few euros, and sit to consume on any appropriate flat and vacant surface. The Riviera is not reserved for gourmets, movie stars and millionaires.

* David Lawrence was hosted by Cathay Pacific, Eurostar, Eurail and France Tourism.