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A Nice and Simple Intro to Nice: The Hotel Armenonville

Where: 20 Avenue des Fleurs, Nice, France, 06000

August is just about the time we start thinking about a trip to the South of France. Lavender! Heat! Beaches! All good. Less good: the fact that you’ll have to fill your bucket with euro notes to pay for your room before you can use it to build a sandcastle on the beach.

But there are bargains to be had in the south of France. One of our personal favorites is the Hotel Armenonville in Nice (coincidentally, one of our favorite towns). It’s nothing if not basic (don’t go expecting any kind of boutique flounce) but it’s spotless, the rooms are like staying in an old style French mansion without being twee, and the prices are always rock bottom: €61 ($80) for a double room without a bathroom, or €78 ($102) ensuite (in winter you can get much better deals, too).

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Even Bomb Threats Are Chic At French Riviera Hotels

Thanks to a bomb scare which turned out to be a false alarm, the French Riviera became everything we've imagined and more yesterday. When the posh seaside Hotel Negresco alerted its 158 guests and staff to a bomb threat, they fled the building in all states at the break of dawn.

Among them was French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaulthier, who fled the hotel clad only in a white dressing gown and joined other alarmed guests by the beach. Apparently the bomb threat was called in by a woman who said that it would detonate at 6:00 AM, and when it hadn't by 7:00 AM, the scene dispersed and the hotel returned to normal.

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Concorde Hotels Are Cuttin' the Fat (From Your Dinner)

Where: 13-15 Promenade des Anglais, Nice, France, 06000

Staying at nice hotels can wreak havoc good dieting intentions: 100 percent true fact (as we like to tell ourselves). All those sugared freebies in the rooms, the elaborate breakfast smorgasboards and the overblown dinner menus add up to something not-so-good for the waistline.

Luckily the trim French chain of Concorde hotels has decided to help out the weak of will by introducing a Zero Complex menu that comes in at under 800 calories for three whole courses — probably the same as the pot au chocolat we'd usually down at first sight.

Because they're good restaurants (like the Palme d’Or at the Martinez in Cannes, which is one of the top draws for A-listers at le festival), you can rest assured that this will be some good stuff: for instance, trout from Lake Geneva at the Hotel de la Paix in Geneva, or an apple and lychee sorbet at Le Palais de la Mediterranee in Nice. "Choosing a dish from the Zero Complex menu does not mean having to cut down on taste or an interesting assortment of flavours," says Concorde. Good.

You won't be paying a premium for your good choices either: the Nice menu starts at 29 euros ($38) for the three courses. And it's available at all European Concorde hotels except its Parisienne grande dame, the snooty Crillon. Well, you've got to keep that fatty French cuisine going somewhere, we suppose.