Train des Merveilles: Day trip from Nice

A few years ago, we visited Nice, France during the Christmas holidays. It was the perfect place to visit with moderate temperatures even in December and longer days as compared to London. While we enjoyed our stay a lot in Nice, we wanted to explore a little more of the surrounding areas. After doing a lot of online research, we came across two strong contenders – Train des Pignes and Train des Merveilles. You can clearly see our love for trains considering both day trips involved trains. In the end after a fair bit of deliberation, we chose Train des Merveilles because we were fascinated by the prospect of being in the Italian Alps and quaint little villages.

We took the Train des Merveilles to Tende from Nice. The tourist office at Nice’s train station provided us with the train timetable. We booked our tickets at the ticket office. This route is run by SNCF and takes about 2 hours to Tende.

We took the morning train departing at 9:30am from Nice train station. The train is modern and the seating is very comfortable. In summer, the 9:30am train has English commentary explaining more about the train, route and how it was built etc.

The train journey is an absolute engineering marvel taking the train through 81 tunnels and over 100s of bridges into the Italian Alps making this the perfect day out for a train lover.

We thoroughly enjoyed the breathtaking views of the ever-changing landscape. There were a few stops of the way but we decided to get off at the final stop at Tende, which is almost on the Italian border.

Tende is a quaint little village in the Italian Alps. The train station itself is very picturesque. The tourist office is close to the train station, it is a good idea to take a peek so you can plan your day in Tende. We went to the Archaeological Museum in Tende, which was free to visit. There was some interesting information about Tende.

After the quick museum visit, we started walking towards the older part of the village. It almost felt like being in the olden days. Cobbled streets, ancient stone houses and tiny winding streets and alleys. There were no people on the streets, it almost felt like we had the whole town to ourselves. We didn’t spot any locals either. They were probably all at home or out working.

It was nearly lunch time and headed to what seemed one of the few restaurants, the owner didn’t speak English but this did not affect the wonderful experience we had. The bread was the freshest, the cheese was delicate and we still think about the food we had there that day.

After a few glasses of wine and the delicious food, we strolled a bit more in the village. We walked to the highest points of the village from where we could see the medieval church and tower against which stood the Alps.

It truly felt like we were in a time capsule away from the noise of today. We took the Train des Merveilles back to Nice ending a perfect day trip from Nice.