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The Cathedral up on the hill, and what has become a radio tower
which was built as a smaller version of the Eiffel tower, a view of
the ship at night, and the metal work on one of the bridges crossing
the river.
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Some of the examples of the stained glass we saw throughout the
trip. Some of it is original, most of it isn't, either because
over the years they changed the designs, or it broke, or they lost
some of it while moving it for the war.
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An incredible engineering marvel, a mechanical astronomical clock,
which nobody knows who made or how it got there. It tracks the
phases of the moon, all the movable religious holidays, chimes on
the hour, has animated characters, etc. The first records they
have of it was it's overhaul in the 1300's.
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Monday afternoon you leave the dock in Lyon and head up the Saone
River. The two images below, brown water on the left and green
on the right are where the two rivers meet, the Saone is a totally different
color then the Rhone is.
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Also on Monday, coaches took us into the Beaujolais region to start
exploring the vineyards that line both sides of the river as far as
you can see. If you look at the images of the grapes below,
you can see that many in the bunch are ready to be picked, indeed if
you look closely at the first picture of the grapes, you can see
some that are already looking like raisons. Because of the
heat of this summer, the grapes were running about three weeks ahead
of schedule. We picked several at a couple of stops (with permission
of course) they were incredibly sweet already. The ship
overnights in Macon.
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Tuesday starts off in Beaune, to visit the Hospices de Beaune, built
in the 1400's as a hospital accepting all but people with the
plague. The hospital is famous for it's multi colored tiled
roof (recently redone). Tapestries below date back hundreds of
years. Each of the beds held two people, the building was
built over a river to supply water and then just a few feet away as
a place to dump waste to be carried away. The beams were
supported in the mouths of dragons and more gargoyles.
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On the way back to the ship in Lyon you drive through the wineries
of the Burgundy region. Lyon offers some of the best
restaurants we've ever visited, and with a good vintage of some fine
Burgundy.........On Wednesday, the ship leaves Lyon and heads up to
Vienne. Vineyards line both sides of the river, and castle
ruins are around every corner. Vienne is home to the Roman
amphitheatre, St Maurice Cathedral, and many other things dating
back thousands of years.
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Even though the stones in the cemetery looked like they dated
hundreds of years ago (if not more) most, if not all of them had
fresh flowers on them.
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The roman Temple of Augustus and Livia. Incredibly
preserved. The only reason this was standing was that at some
point in it's history they made a church out of it, putting up walls
between the columns. Most other temples had been stripped to
build other things, and were destroyed in the process, but this one
remained intact, and they removed the walls to restore it.
It's right there in the center of town, surrounded with sidewalk
cafes, shops, etc.
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Some of the images above are from excavations still going on. The
color chart below shows the dates by the color of when the Cathedral
was built, starting in the 12th century.
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Some ancient stones they haven't figured out where they go yet, and
that's Anna in the lower right of the temple picture below.
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On Wednesday afternoon it's back on board for a sail down to Tournon
and Train l'Hermitage. The two towns are directly across each
other on the river. Along the way down the river, you pass
acres and acres of vineyards, a nuclear power plant, some ancient
roman looking construction, castles, and sheep hiding in the shade
from the heat. You also go through several locks to drop the
boat down as it proceeds down the river.
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To drop in elevation, you sail into a full lock, they close the door
behind you, let the water out lowering the ship down, then open the
door in front to continue sailing.
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The view from the hills in Tournon can't be described, it has to be
experienced. You hike up a set of steps to the middle of the
mountain, and then you overlook the river and the twin towns on both
sides. That's Anna and I on the left, and a couple of friends
we made on the trip Patty and Kelli. Remember this is the
first week of August, not the middle of October, and note that many
of the trees in the images are already dried up and losing their
leaves. The intense heat and no rain for weeks was not kind to
Europe this summer.
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That's Kenny, in the stripes, one of the Cruise Managers on the
ship, who came along with us to the top of the hill. The
rooster was very intent that we didn't bother it. I'm fairly
sure I had him as dinner that night, or one of his friends.
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Tournon has a wine shop that has these giant (six or seven feet
high) open vats in the back full of different types of wine.
Bring in any old jug you can get your hands on, and you fill it up
for 2 euros (just over $2.25) per liter. Sure, you laugh at
it, but in the heart of the Cotes-du-Rhone district, even the cheap
wine (less then what we would pay for a bottle of soda) is very good
stuff. Needless to say, many water bottles were being filled
by ship people. On Thursday we took the Valley Steam Train
through Ardeche Gorge and the Doux Valley. Here it was real
easy to see how low the water levels were, at many places the river
was dry.
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Some of the locks on the river are incredibly deep, this one was
several times the height of the ship.
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I'm still trying to figure this one out, at the Cruas Meysse nuclear
power plant they had a giant mural on the side of one of the smoke
stacks of a naked child playing with what to me looked like a
rendering of the stack. I do know it's the largest mural in
Europe and it's called Le Verseau (Aquarius, the Water Carrier), and
before September 11th they use to give 2.5 hour tours of the
facility. That's what the world needs, tours of working
nuclear power plants.
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You just keep saying over and over again, the ultralight is probably
a security person, after all they would never let people just fly
those around a nuclear plant, what if a tour was going on?
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As the day got on, the wind started picking up, the windsock is
fully extended. No matter to our captain, who was at 27 the
youngest in the fleet on the rivers, he brought it right into the
locks without even a hint of a touch on either side.
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We're on our way to Viviers for our overnight stop. There was
a bit of rain that night, and as the windsock above showed, a ton of
wind. It can't be shown in still pictures, but watching the
people in the row boat below trying to get around the harbor and
into the river in the wind was better then any show they had on
board the ship.
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On Friday morning as we continue down towards Avignon, you enter
Provence, again with vineyards on each side. Avignon is famous
for the Palace of the Popes, built in the 4th century. The
guys in the picture on the right were workers working at the Palace,
this was lunch time, a piece of plywood on a couple of saw horses, a
ton of wine that kept flowing, and no food anywhere to be found.
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Merry Go Round, shopping, touring, lots to do here.
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A morning sail down from Avignon to Arles, with many catles, forts,
and other ruins along the river. This part of the trip is
beautiful, a mix of old and new.
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Arles, our location for Saturday and Sunday Morning, was a beautiful
city. The symbol is the lion, the one on the left below is
from a bridge that didn't survive the war, the cat next to it is
trying to look like a lion, but was in pretty bad shape.
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Artwork was just about every where (it's not hard to see why Van
Gough was inspired here). There was also a bullfight in town
at the Roman Arena, which while it's a bit smaller then the Coliseum
in Rome is, it's much better preserved, indeed, all this time later,
they still use it for events.
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Back when, each of the archways in the arena was walled up and a
family was living in each one. In the 1800's when they were
remodeling, over 200 families were displaced.
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