A walk along the Promenade des Anglais captures all that's best about the French Riviera: lavish hotels, a blue Mediterranean and boutiques shaded by awnings stamped with expensive brand names. A full day in port lets you explore Nice or head for the hills to sample simpler pleasures like lavenders and vines.  Santa Margherita is our first port of call in Italy, a country that still sets the benchmark for style and design. It's not hard to see why. In cities such as Florence and Venice, art and architecture are part  of everyday life, bars and trattorias look out on enviable vistas, and new treasures are still coming to light. As if to prove the point, our call in Sorrento offers the chance of a visit to the excavations in Pompeii.