An easy day trip from Nice is to San Remo, Italy – just over the French – Italian border – where you can go for a bike ride along a coastal cycle path. Nik, our friends Jessicah and Brian, and I spent a few hours biking the path in January before stopping for a delicious lunch along the route.
Getting to San Remo
It’s easiest to reach San Remo by train and you can either bring your own bike, or rent one from the many shops along the path. Whether you leave from Gare de Nice Ville (the main train station) or from the Nice-Riquier station, you’ll take the train about 55 minutes to Ventimiglia and change to the Italian train system and ride about 20 minutes to San Remo. Since you’re crossing the border, you’ll want to have your passport with you in case they do a random ID check on the train or platform.
Bike Rental
Once we got to San Remo, we sought out a NoloBici rental spot where we could rent bikes for the day. They offer a variety of bikes, electric scooters, tandems, rickshaws and more. They even offer bike baskets which came in handy for some of our personal items.
The Path
The cycle path runs along the Italian Riviera with spectacular views of the coast. We set out biking West to East through the towns of San Remo, Arma di Taggia, Riva Ligure, Santo Stefano al Mare before returning back to San Remo.
A good portion of the path runs along a former railway line where some of the path is wide open and some is through old tunnels.
One part of the path is currently closed where storms destroyed a bridge and you’re forced onto the road with local traffic and through a roundabout! For safety reasons, none of us took any pictures while navigating the roundabout.
We also came upon a giant chair that called our name for a group picture. And it was about this time we decided to stop for lunch nearby.
As we continued biking past the giant chair, we passed a few good looking restaurants and decided to stop at Ristorante da Mario in Riva Ligure.
It did not disappoint. Highlights were my seafood linguine and the lasagna special.
Following lunch we continued biking a bit more but eventually had to start back and return the bikes.
Some stats according to my Strava tracking: 17.4 miles biked in just over 2 hours of moving time. If we had more time before turning back to return the bikes, we may have continued further to San Lorenzo al Mare and perhaps gone as far as Imperia.
The four of us rented standard city bikes, but if I were to do it again, I’d definitely spend a few extra euros for the e-bike upgrade. For each pair of bike rentals, the total for approximately 4.5 hours came to 32€ — about $37 USD.
We had such a great day with friends, and the sunny weather made it even better. By the end of it, all four of us agreed we’d absolutely bike the San Remo cycle path again. If you’re looking for something a little different from the usual day trips to Antibes or Cannes, this is such a hidden gem.