Southern France’s Cote d’Azur is not the gay destination, but it’s certainly a gay destination.  The area’s largest city is Nice, which, contrary to popular opinion, is not a sickly ‘nice’, but a little bit naughty with a pervading tolerant spirit and string of gay hangouts between your Nice holiday apartment and favourite beach.

La Plage de Coco beach is Nice’s gay beach.  I say beach, but I mean rocky platform.  A second private beach - Plage Castel - is more popular and categorised as gay-friendly, as is its neighbouring public beach.  There are at least two further gay beaches just outside Nice including La Plage d’Eze - or simply ‘Eze’.

Eze is a busy, gay, mainly nudist hangout, but you’ll need wheels to get in on the action.  If you don’t have a car, or a friend with a car who’ll wait outside your Nice apartment while you check you’ve got your sunglasses, spare sunglasses, lotion, lip balm, drinks, snacks and dips (there’s nothing for miles, or at least a mile), take the bus (the no.100 leaving from outside the main bus station).

You’ll need to go down some steps, take a right across a first beach (not gay), and cross the rocks before you arrive in this tranquil haven of bare beauty - a good ten-minute trot across the pebbles.

Oh, and if you don’t like pebbles, don’t book a holiday apartment in Nice. Or, take a trip to La Plage de La Batterie for some sandy moments.  In high summer you’ll be sharing the sand with young families, meaning a lot of children.  Ange and Brad have recently been clogging up Nice beach space with their growing clan.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were among those attending the nearby 61st Cannes Film Festival, running May 14 - 25.  While this is a strictly invite only affair, Nice has an open door policy on all its festivals - being a popular vacation resort there are quite a few - as well its annual winter-month festival, Nice Carnival, held in February.