Vienne & Lyon (Day 1)

Finally, I'm getting back to writing about the rest of our trip!  That's because we've already booked our next one and I'm determined to finish writing about this one first!

After breakfast, we had a morning trip into Vienne.  This is a city that used to be under Roman rule, with Roman monuments that  are still intact today.  It was also a home to several archbishops with many churches and convents. We started our walk with a visit to the Gothic former cathedral of St. Maurice, that was built between 1052 and 1533. The inside of the church had wooden chairs instead of pews, with hard wooden kneelers in front of them. It had beautiful tapestries, hanging on the sides of the church. Then we walked to the Cybele Gardens where the Roman remains of a forum with two magnificent archways remain in the center of the city.
The Roman Temple of Emperor Augustus and Liva was awesome.  It has survived because it was transformed into a church and a library and was recently uncovered and is being renovated.  We weren't able to go in, but it was impressive.

The town was completely empty, since it was still a holiday weekend (Armistice day).  I did finally spot a fabric store, where they had their fabrics on the street for sale.  We had a break for lunch so we window shopped and had coffee outdoors at a real French cafe. The tram, which was several cars long, picked us up and sped up small winding streets.  It took us to the highest point in the town, Mt. Pipet, considered a sacred area because it was on top of the mountain.

 We drove within inches from the curbs and the walls of the houses.  We passed this beautiful cemetery adorned with mums.  The guide told us that in France they are the symbol of death, sort of like lilys are in the U.S.  The Pipet Fortress was built here, where today stands a chapel and a statue dedicated to Notre-Dame de-la-Salette.

Unfortunately it was pretty foggy, or the view would've been even better.  We could see the ancient ruins of a theater still used today.
After going back to the ship, we had lunch and cruised up the river to Lyon.  We were able to disembark and explore on our own.  Mark and I decided to visit the Textile Museum (I'm sure that was a highlight of his trip!). The textile museum was really cool.  Of course Mark and I were sort of at a disadvantage without Chrissie to speak French.  All of the labels on the displays were in French and all of the attendants only spoke French.  There were carpets, tapestries, wedding dresses, and gowns for women and long silk coats worn by men.  In one room there was a special display that had these beautiful dresses decorated with ribbons and heavy beading.  It turns out it was a Fashion Show of dresses inspired from the time of Marie Antoinette created by current designers.

I bought things like bookmarks, cards and small pieces of fabric, that I just realized recently were beautiful glass cleaner cloths. On our way back to the ship, we saw a store that had MoMo's name on it.  It just seemed fitting.  Happy Mother's Day, Mom.


Next: Lyon Day 2

Bonjour! Comment allez-vous?

Hello everyone!  How are you?  As you can see from my title, I'm under the French influence, since my sisters and my husband and I just returned from France 3 weeks ago.  It was a wonderful trip, full of adventures and a journey into history that was awe-inspiring.

It always seems the worst part of a trip is the plane ride, hardly worth mentioning, except for the fact that my sister Chrissie, who has been practicing her French, got her first chances to use it here.  As we ran for our flight from Paris to Marseilles, and had to go through security check in again, we would have missed the plane, except that she asked an attendant (in French) if it was possible to make our flight that left in 45 minutes.  We were then fast tracked to an empty security check in and were aboard our Air France flight to Marseilles with time to spare.  The cutest moment was Chrissie telling the male flight attendant in French that she needed two waters because we were very thirsty from running for the flight.  He was smiling at her attempts to speak French and seemed to appreciate it.

We flew into Marseille airport and took a bus to embark on our ship.  We were taking a Viking Cruise of Southern France, starting in Avignon and stopping at several points along the way north.  When we arrived on the boat it was docked in Arles, instead of Avignon, because it had been raining for three straight days and they were not certain we'd be able to travel from our spot, unless the river went down.  After we arrived, we headed to the dining room for a splendid meal, and finally got some rest after traveling for 24 straight hours since leaving Pittsburgh.

The next morning, bright and early we were scheduled for a guided tour through Arles, a city that has roots back to the year 730.  We had receivers with earpieces to hear our guides, so we could follow at a distance to take photos.  As long as we could still hear our guide we were within walking distance of the group.

Portions of a wall that surrounded the city still exist and we visited a Roman arena from the 1st century that is still used today for bullfighting.  They have 2 kinds of bullfights there, one where the bull is killed, and the second, where the bullfighter tries to pin a rosette on the bull, and the bull gets to win in this fight, and is not killed.  We were able to go in and sit in the seats while they explained about the bullfights.  Imagine, here we were sitting in an arena that was around in the time of the Roman Empire.  Quite amazing, when you stop to think about it.

 Arles was also home to painter Vincent Van Gogh for a year.  During his stay, he painted 150 paintings and over 100 drawings.  We saw several spots that he made famous in his paintings and visited the hospital where he spent time after he cut off his ear.  This yellow cafe was one of his paintings.

 We passed the Antique Theater of Arles that was still standing and in amazing shape.  We visited the Cloitre of Saint Trophime where monks had lived.  The architecture was just gorgeous.

The streets are incredibly tiny and a car would come speeding around a bend when a tour group was walking down the street.  When we reached the center of town, an accordion player was serenading us in the town square.  We wanted to go in and look at the church, but it was closed at noon, so we missed that.

Our guided tour ended and with the afternoon free, we chose to shop a little before going back to the ship. 

Since this is the first day of walking, at this point, my feet were killing me.  I needed to stop and take some ibuprofen and put a heel pad in my shoe so I could make it back to the boat.  I put my camera away and we were on our way back to the ship.  I was concentrating on walking and how exhausted I was.  But when we walked past a set of steps I just sighed and said, stop, I have to take a picture of this.  It was calling to me.  I got my camera back out of my bag and took what Mark said is his favorite photo of our entire trip.  I took one shot, this is it.

Next:  Avignon and the Popes Palace