Royal Beach

Royal Beach belongs to the Royal Antibes hotel but sits eighty metres in front of it, across the road, on the fine sand of the Plage du Ponteil about five minutes' walk from Antibes old town. That location is the point: you can spend the morning in the covered market or the Picasso museum and be on a lounger by lunchtime, which is not true of most Riviera hotel beaches. The set-up is unusual in that it is split across two very different surfaces. Roughly a hundred and twenty to a hundred and seventy loungers are spread between the sand itself and a raised private timber deck built out over the water, and the deck rows are quieter, breezier and priced accordingly. Pricing is refreshingly transparent for the Cote d'Azur, with published rates for first row and second row on both the sand and the deck. The restaurant does Mediterranean cooking with an Italian lean, salads, carpaccios, fresh pasta and fish, with set menus in the forty to fifty euro range and a children's menu. There is a private car park, free wifi, supervised swimming and a car attendant, and animals are accepted. In high summer the beach stays open until ten at night from Wednesday to Sunday, so evenings on the deck are part of the offer rather than an afterthought.