Remote Working... Remote Living?

This Spring, millions of people worked from home for an extended period. Companies found innovative ways to allow remote working flexibility, and many people found their productivity increase, and enjoyed the break from daily commuting and open-plan office environments. As the world slowly recovers from the pandemic threat, could remote working become the new normal? And if so, will people choose to work from home away from cities, in beautiful, sunny locations like the Riviera?

Could you see yourself working from home... on the Riviera?

The technology for a home-working revolution has existed for a while now, but perhaps it took global health emergency for companies and employees to take the plunge and trial home working on a large scale. Of course, the home working lifestyle is not right for everyone (and many jobs still require site-specific workplaces), but for many office workers computer-based jobs, the shift has been a welcome break from distracting offices, long, crowded commutes and poor air quality in city centres. The flexibility to do household chores in lunch breaks, and care for pets and children during office hours, has some people considering a more permanent sea-change.

Prospective property buyers will be spoilt for choice in a wide range of Riviera locations, both coastal and hinterland

When restrictions are lifted and travel is once again safe, Riviera Route will be organising a series of real estate retreats, for people in Northern Europe who are interested in relocating to the sunny Riviera while remaining employed in their home countries. Our retreats will introduce prospective buyers to trusted estate agents, and will include tours of the towns and villages of this region, both coastal and hinterland. Property prices here can be surprisingly affordable, particularly in the medieval stone villages. We'll give frank assessments of the pros and cons of each town, and will help guide prospective buyers through the practicalities of buying and relocating here.

Property prices on the Riviera can be surprisingly affordable, particularly in the medieval stone villages

To register your interest in these tours, please contact Riviera Route. We'll keep you updated and will help make your dream of Mediterranean living a reality!

Email us today at contact@rivieraroute.com

Wellness on the Riviera

The Riviera is the perfect place for wellness retreats. It offers clean air, abundant sunshine, a healthy and delicious cuisine based on herbs, seafood and vegetables, and plenty of serene hilltop spaces with commanding views. There is a long history of Europe's city dwellers escaping to the Riviera for wellbeing and peace of mind - indeed, doctors in Victorian London used to recommend wintering in the Riviera to their patients!

With its clean air and stunning landscapes, the Riviera is perfect for wellness retreats

Perhaps the best reason to hold a wellness retreat in the Riviera is its extraordinarily healthy, delicious cuisine. Too often, people think of healthy living, "detoxing", as an exercise in denying themselves the pleasures of life. So visitors to the Riviera delight in learning to cook Ligurian cuisine, and we recommend that every wellness retreat here includes at least a short introduction to the region's gastronomic traditions.

Because the Riviera is hemmed in between the Maritime Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, it lacks big tracts of land for raising cattle or growing wheat. Instead, farming is done on little patches of land, normally terraced along the hills of this mountainous region. Because of this geography, many local dishes tend to be pescetarian, vegetarian or vegan. Even dishes that do include meat tend to be quite frugal with it and, indeed, meat can easily be left out or substituted for vegan or vegetarian alternatives.

Many traditional Riviera recipes are either vegetarian or vegan

Similarly, the lack of grain has influenced cooking in Liguria, Provençe and the Côte d'Azur. Of course, today Ligurians enjoy fine pasta as much as the rest of Italy does. But there are also older recipes here that are gluten-free and very light on carbohydrates. Slow cooking vegetable-based stews are a delight during Riviera winters. In early spring, artichokes and asparagus are abundant, and by summer the locals are eating salads almost every day, often accompanied by grilled seafood and dark, flavour-packed Taggiasche olives. By early autumn, late-ripening fruits like figs, quinces and apples are on the table and by Christmas-time, the Riviera's citrus harvest is ready once again.

The diversity of the Riviera's agricultural produce is hard to match

The long coastline, combined with the naval traditions inherited from the Genoese, mean that the Riviera is naturally a seafaring region. Fishermen bring fresh fish to the markets of Nice, Monaco and Sanremo daily. The result is a cuisine high in healthy Omega oils, with famous dishes such as salade Niçoise and stuffed anchovies.

All this healthy food is a wonderful power source for the region's wellness pursuits. Cycling and roller blading have boomed on the Italian side of the Riviera, since the old coast-hugging railway line was turned into a scenic 24 kilometre-long traffic-free paved path. In the hills, hiking guides take visitors to little-known vantage points where Liguria's Celtic Druids used to worship. And on mountain-top perches in the nature reserves of the Côte d'Azur, yoga, meditation and pilates groups can be seen throughout the warmer months of the year.

Get inspired by the seaside...

...or invigorated in the hinterland.

Riviera Route has a network of qualified, experienced instructors in every aspect of wellbeing. We also work with instructors abroad who bring their students to the Riviera for retreats of between three and seven days. Please contact us to design a tailor-made retreat for your group, or get in touch to learn more about upcoming wellness retreats that you can join.

Riviera Route Summer 2020 Wellness Retreats:

24-26 June: Mountaintop yoga retreat - Triora, Italy

8-12 July: Meditation retreat - Parc Départemental de la Grande Corniche / Éze, France

9-13 September - hiking, cycling and cooking on the Italian Riviera - Sanremo, Ceriana and Dolceacqua, Italy

How to get to the Riviera by train: a quick guide

Riviera Route welcomes clients to the sunny Riviera from all over Europe. The gateway to the Riviera is Nice, which is home to France's busiest airport outside of Paris. But increasingly, people are also interested in low-emission train journeys for environmental reasons. The good news is that Nice is also one of Europe's best connected cities by public transport, so the Riviera can still be enjoyed by all.

Travelling to the Riviera by rail is a comfortable way to lower your carbon footprint

Train passengers from the UK can take the regular Eurostar service from London to Lille in Northern France and, from there, change to one of the many daily TGV services to Nice, bypassing Paris to save time and effort. If setting out from the French capital, the good news is the direct TGV train from Gare de Lyon to Nice takes less than six hours and can cost as little as €25 when booked in advance.

Visitors from the Belgium and the Netherlands can easily connect by Thalys train via Lille or Paris, or indeed take the direct high-speed TGV service connecting Brussels to Nice every Friday (returning to Brussels on the Saturday).

Every day, there are dozens of regional trains connecting Nice with Ventimiglia in Italy, from where you can catch fast intercity trains to Rome, Genoa, Turin and Milan. Nice is also connected with direct Thello trains to Milan, where high-speed services link up the Lombard capital with the rest of the Italian peninsula and Switzerland.

Choose the hubs of Lille and Milan for direct services to Nice

German passengers have two options; either getting to Paris or Lille and then enjoying the scenic route south directly to Nice, or alternatively crossing the Alps, with regular fast connections between Munich and Milan, and changing in Milan for the direct Thello trains to Nice (stopping in Sanremo and Monaco-Monte Carlo along the way). Similarly, visitors from Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gothenburg are best served through the Munich-Milan train line.

Those who enjoy the romantic experience of a long train journey can enjoy the direct weekly services linking Nice with Central and Eastern Europe. The RZU 017Б leaves Moscow every Thursday afternoon and calls at Minsk, Warsaw, Bratislava, Vienna and several other cities before reaching the sunny Cote d’Azur on the Saturday afternoon (returning to Moscow on the Sunday morning on the 018Б service). Although three days on a train may seem like an adventurous choice, the option of sleeping coaches and first class service can make this a pleasurable experience.

You can go as far as Moscow on a weekly direct train from Nice

In addition to trains, new Flixbus services connect Nice directly with the Swiss cities of Zurich and Lausanne by coach, and they offer a carbon-offset tariff, allowing travellers to mitigate the emissions from their trip by a scheme that plants trees and repairs environmental damage.

Going green does not mean we have to stop exploring the joys Europe has to offer. Nice and the Riviera are well-placed to welcome environmentally-conscious travellers for decades to come.