A French Mediterranean Escape
From the Mediterranean light of the Riviera into the lavender hills of the Luberon, then west to a university city built for outdoor living — four stops through Provence and the Mediterranean coast, at a pace that leaves room to actually sit still.
The route
Nice → Aix-en-Provence → Gordes → Montpellier
The journey
🇫🇷 Nice
France · Day 1–4 · 4 nights
The route opens on the Baie des Anges — the Promenade des Anglais, the old town's pastel façades, the market at Cours Saleya — a proper stay on the Riviera before the trip turns inland toward Provence's hills.
Explore Nice ↗
🇫🇷 Aix-en-Provence
France · Day 5–7 · 3 nights
A short drive inland to a city built around fountains and plane-tree boulevards, where café terraces and a Cézanne-haunted old town replace the coastline — Nice's seafront energy giving way to something slower and shadier.
Explore Aix-en-Provence ↗
🇫🇷 Gordes
France · Day 8–9 · 2 nights
Deeper into the Luberon, to a hilltop village of stone terraces stacked above the valley — the route's quietest stretch, and its clearest reason to have a car: farmhouses, lavender fields and stone villages within easy reach.
Explore Gordes ↗
🇫🇷 Montpellier
France · Day 10–12 · 3 nights
Back toward the coast to close in a city that's spent decades reinventing itself around its students and its trams — a livelier last stop than Gordes, but still unmistakably Mediterranean, before the trip ends.
Explore Montpellier ↗Like this route through France? Plan it your way in the Trip Planner — no account needed, and every stop stays fully editable.