Wednesday October 23, 2024 - Viviers, France
We arrived in Viviers overnight and woke up to another beautiful day, albeit a bit cooler than the weather we have been having at 17C or 63F. As we embarked on our walk with our tour guide to the small town of Viviers, some of our group decided they were not dressed warmly enough and so they headed back to the ship to get more clothing. On our World Cruise with Viking our Cruise Director, Bruce always used to say don’t check the weather on your phone, instead go stand on your balcony to judge the temperature before leaving the ship so you know how to dress while outside. We call going out on the balcony “Doing a Bruce!” On this cruise we’ve dressed in layers and as it warms up, we peel off the layers.
Stopping for photo ops because we were trying to kill time waiting for people to catch up to the tour
Anyway, our Guide was lovely and tried to be accommodating to the folks who hadn’t dressed properly, by slowing our tour down so they could catch up with us as we slowly walked into the old town of Viviers. I’ve frankly not got a lot of patience for slow tours, but we rolled with it, because we wanted to be on the tour to hear what the guide was saying.
We had visited Viviers when we were on the Uniworld River Cruise about 10 years ago and the town was charming. While on that visit we also got to experience a private organ concert inside the gothic Roman Catholic cathedral of Saint Vincent, so we knew that while today’s tour would be interesting, walking the small streets of Viviers and having a great view from the top of the ancient walled city; nothing was going to top what we had experienced before when we had the private concert inside the Cathedral!
Our tour left the ship at 9am and we were scheduled to be back to the ship by 11:30am as the Viking Buri was scheduled to depart Viviers as soon as we were all back to the ship. There was one other tour which left from the ship via bus and went to explore the Ardeche region, which Viviers is a part of, and we were going to be stopping later in the afternoon further north up the Rhone for a few minutes, to pick up this group of passengers who elected to do the optional bus tour which they paid extra for.
The name ‘Viviers’ comes from the Latin ‘Vivarium’ which refers to fish farming ponds built on the banks of the Rhone River.
Viviers had many charming places to take photographs with old cobblestone streets and stone walled buildings, it really was a dreamy place to visit
I love these little bridges connecting two buildings in France. The guide told us what they were called but I can’t remember. I just think they are cool and I love the architecture in this ancient town!
Walking up the cobblestone streets in Viviers to the cathedral. There was quite a Mistral wind today so I had to tie my hair back to stop it blowing in my face when I was attempting to take photos
The grounds at the top of the ancient walled city of Viviers provided us with stunning views of the French countryside. Just look at all of that blue sky! Not bad for October 23rd in France!
The views of the lower town of Viviers after we walked to the top of the town which was previously known as the religious part of the town because the Cathedral is located at the top of the town
View from the top of the town of Viviers
Inside the cathedral in Viviers which as built in 1119.
The alter is made of Carrara marble
The facade of this Romanesque house had been lavishly redone in 1546 by a bourgeois, named Noel Albert who was in the salt trade and was responsible for collecting taxes which he refused to pass along to the King (hence the fancy house). During the wars of religion he adhered to Protestantism and became a Huguenot military leader and trashed and plundered the Roman Catholic cathedral in Viviers and seized the town of Viviers. He was arrested after the signing of the peace treaty and was executed in Toulouse in 1568. I guess the saying “There is no escaping death and taxes” really did apply in his case!
Viviers Cathedral built in the 11th century in the Romanesque, gothic style. One of the spires on the cathedral was struck by lightening and destroyed in 2021. Our guide also told us the organist for the cathedral died in 2020 of Covid and there has not been another organist in the cathedral since that time. We were so glad we got to experience the organ concert when we did since we obviously were not going to experience one on this visit to the cathedral or to Viviers..
We had no free time in Viviers after our walking tour so we elected to walk back to the ship with our Guide.
As we walked by the ‘Petanque’ grounds in Viviers we remembered that we had joined the locals last time we were here for an impromptu game of pétanque. A game similar to bocce where you have to throw your ball closer to the target than the opposing team. No one was playing pétanque today, or it would have been nice to join them again for a quick game to remember old times!
We got back on the Viking Buri and it was soon time for sail away. I told Richard I wanted to go up to the rooftop while we sailed away from Viviers.
When we went up on the roof we saw that our Aussie friends were up on the roof walking around the walking track. I also saw that there was a putting green so I had to try a couple of putts to see how my game was since I’m taking the month of October off golf. I was able to sink a couple of very long putts on the first ‘go’ so I don’t think the break from golf has been bad for my game!
Vange practising her putting on the roof of the Viking Buri
We taught our Aussie friends how to play shuffleboard and then we had a quick game of girls vs the boys with the boys winning the first match of our ongoing shipboard competition.
Waiting to enter the lock on the Rhone
We all went to lunch together as we watched the Buri get ready to enter a lock. There are many locks on the Rhone and they fascinate us to understand the feat of engineering that it must have taken to be able to accommodate the ship traffic on the Rhone.
While Richard napped, my Aussie friend Vange and me went and played a game of French Trivia in the Lounge with our Program Director Daniella. I have to say we didn’t do so well only scoring 5/15 points! If Richard had been with us we would have done much better as he speaks fluent French.
Our afternoon involved scenic sailing and blogging for me until we were invited to the Viking Explorer Society cocktail party for previous Viking cruisers. On our ship the Buri, there are close to 50% of people that had sailed with Viking before so we had to takeover most of the Lounge area to get our free drink and appetizers and do the traditional “SKAL” toast with the Norwegian liquor Aquavit.
After the Viking Explorer Society cocktail party was the Port Talk with Program Director Daniella. She mentioned that tomorrow most of the guests would be going on the Steam Train as their included excursion in Tournon and only 9 passengers would be staying in Tournon to do a walk in the winery, which was the active activity for this port. I knew that Valhrona Chocolate factory was in T’ain l’Hermitage across the river from Tournon, but it seemed that since the Buri was only dropping people off to catch a bus to the Steam Train and then it was sailing without any passengers to Andance where the buses would pick up people after they had finished the Steam Train, there would be no opportunity to go to Valhrona.
Oh Oh….this is where I needed Richard! I need a ‘transpo’ guy to help figure out how we could stay in Tournon and go to the Valhrona chocolate factory instead of doing the Steam Train, so that we could get some steps in and also go to Valhrona. The last time we were on the Uniworld river cruise we actually had done the walking tour of the Chaputier winery in T’ain and Tournon and we had enough free time in the afternoon to be able to walk to the Valhrona chocolate factory. Our Uniworld ship docked closer to Valhrona, but we were still within an easy 20 minute walk to Valhrona.
Richard quickly went to Guest Services and asked if there was a bus going to Andance after the walking tour people were finished their walk in T’Ain and Tournon and if so, where could we get on that same bus to meet up with the ship in Andance. It was determined that we could get on the same bus with the winery walkers as long as we promised to be back to the bus by 11:30-11:45am. We agreed that we could do that and so Daniela gave the ‘of’ for us to be able to do our own made up tour tomorrow.
Chestnut soup. I’ve never had this soup before but it was really good!
We had a most delightful dinner with the Aussies and also some new friends from Hawaii that we were introduced to by the Aussies. The chestnut soup, coq au vin and walnut cake were really quite good!
Coq au vin marinated in red wine for 48 hours!
Walnut cake
Once we arrived in Tournon for the evening, Viking brought onboard some local dancers to perform for us. I forget to take photos but the husband and wife team did quite a few French dances and you could tell they were outstanding dancers. They run a local dance school and you could tell by the way they moved that they had been dancing together for a very long time. Viking also brought on a guitarist/pianist/vocalist who had some of the crowd up dancing. We are finding that this cruise has attracted a lot older demographic of passengers and there were only 40 people max who were up in the lounge at 9:30pm at night. After the dancers left, half the crowd went back to their cabins!
Sometimes as we say while cruising “that was a half day town” vs a “3 day town” or a “1 day town”. Viviers was delightful and a nice place to stop to walk the cobblestone streets of this ancient town, but there really only was enough to do in town for 2.5 hours. We have to remember though that part of River Cruising with Viking or any River Cruise line is to make sure we relax and enjoy the entire experience instead of just trying to jam in as many towns and steps per day in each town. Viviers was different each time we’ve been there, but I think twice in Viviers is enough for a lifetime! And I’m very excited for tomorrow now that I know that we are going ‘rogue’ and get to do something besides the included or optional tour. Our most fun that we had around the world when on the 2022/2023 Viking World Cruise was when we went ‘rogue’ and went and did something outside of the usual tours being offered.
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