Campanile is a European hotel chain I’d never heard of before booking into the Campanile Nice Airport Hotel. Stopping over in Nice, my main criterion was being close to the airport. A bonus was that the Campanile Nice Airport Hotel, located at 459-461 Promenade des Anglais, is also less than a ten-minute walk to a train station. And it is adjacent to Parc Phoenix. (More about the park below!)
Our stay did not get off to a good start, as we waited more than half an hour for the free shuttle. This need not be a problem for anyone reading this, however. First, the hotel is across a parking lot and the Promenade des Anglais from the Nice/Cote d’azure airport’s Terminal 3. And, presuming one arrives at Terminal 1, as we did, the shuttle bus that loops to the three terminals also stops about a minute’s walk from the Campanile Nice Airport Hotel after stopping at Terminal 3, on the way back to Terminal 1.
Not knowing that, we waited for someone to come from the hotel. We were mollified by how friendly the two women who eventually showed up in the hotel van were. Among other things, they told us about Parc Phoenix and how to get to the train station (the one nearby is Saint Augustin, not the central/main Nice train station, but the first stop of trains going west to Cannes, Marseilles, etc.). They also checked us in. (The delay was in their being able to get away from the desk.)
There were some more frustrations ahead, including finding the exorbitant rates French hotels (not just this one) charge for Internet access — ten euros an hour for a dial-up modem’s access? No thanks!
The room was clean and not cramped. Not spacious, but larger than most of the hotel rooms in which I’ve stayed in Europe (and London). I was pleased that there was a top sheet, not the usual duvet (“comforter”) that I invariably find makes me sweat under it.
We also experienced a string of hotels in which the heating was turned off after the winter and the air-conditioning not yet available. Not that we wanted either, but we wanted some ventilation. Fortunately, the windows opened (and, fortunately, our room was on the side away from the street, so there was no noise; there might be some on weekdays, and opening the window negates the double-paned soundproofing of the windows, of course).
The bathroom had a hair-dryer and what I consider a shaving mirror (others consider a make-up mirror). The room also had a coffee/tea maker, which is not standard issue in French hotel rooms, even on the Riviera with its international clientele.
The room was modern black, red and gold (see my second photo here) with a long black desk and adequate light to read in bed. (We did not watch tv; the channel listing included CNN.)
The first night, we were exhausted from the three flights it took to get us from the west coast of the US to the French Riviera and ate in the hotel restaurant. None of the waiters spoke any English. My French got us the entrees we wanted, but in saying I didn’t want coffee, I somehow got the coffee I did not want and did not get the dessert I wanted. (Both were on the prix fixe menu for a low E9.95.)
I’m a bit surprised that the restaurant did not have a bilingual menu (oddly, there was one in the elevator!), given that few of the guests were French. Most were Japanese and Korean, but English is a lingua franca for them…
We returned to the restaurant for the breakfast buffet, which online sources say is included. We were charged for it (them, since we stayed two nights): E5. In that our room was a pleasantly low E60 and we enjoyed Nice, we took this easily in stride. The cafe au lait was good, and there was a juicer to squeeze one’s own orange juice.
We especially enjoyed Parc Phoenix, which we first heard about in the hotel shuttle. It is a huge park with a huge greenhouse (one room of which was so sweltering that I became light-headed), a big fountain, and large pools that ducks have made a big duck pond. (How easy it was to see a pochard that I had struggled to see in Spain on a birdwatching trip!)
Just outside the park entrance (park admission is E1) is an elegant tripartite structure designed by Kenzo Tange, which houses the Asian Arts Museum (Musée des Arts Asiatiques). It has no admission charge–at least we were not charged one, perhaps because we didn’t get there until 16:00 (4 PM) and it closes at 17:00 (5 PM) 15 October through April (an hour later from May until mid-October). The collection is not large, but the pieces are of very high quality. There is a subterranean set of galleries for special exhibitions. And the terraces provide good spots to view the ducks and black swans.
The hotel is a few miles from the Old Town and the “Chateau” (the hill on which a fortress used to be, until Louis XIV had it razed during the 17th century), but Nice has an excellent public transportation system (E1 for transfers on trams and busses within 70 minutes — be sure to stamp your ticket after buying it from the driver!).
The hotel is on the Promenade Des Anglais, which is the walkway along the (rocky) beach that Victorian English winter visitors had built. We walked all the way to the Chateau (to look things over), but I would recommend catching a tram from the Arenas stop. (Arenas is the complex that either includes the hotel or the complex which our room in the hotel faced.)
The hotel is supposed to have a swimming pool. The weather was not conducive to lying by a pool (or on the Mediterranean beach), but I did not see the pool. I did see bicycles for rent and the lobby bar.
