Choir at the chapel After a full day sailing, we stepped off the boat in Lyon and into something completely unexpected, a concert in a chapel that no longer serves a religious purpose. It’s still very much a chapel, though. The moment you walk in, you feel it. High domed ceiling, stone and marble everywhere,…
From Avignon we cruised down to the Provençal port of Arles. It’s famous for two things, its Roman past, which is still very much on display, and Vincent van Gogh. Being Dutch, I can pronounce his name properly, which is more than can be said for most people on the tour. Roman times Arles began…
We visited the Pont du Gard on a clear, bright afternoon that the Mistral turned absolutely freezing. The sun looked inviting, but the wind had other ideas, driving hard and cold down the valley carved by the Gard River. It’s an astonishing sight. Three tiers of arches stacked one on top of the other, span…
Avignon is one of the many cities along the Rhône that began life as a Roman settlement. The Romans knew a good spot when they saw one, and the river was a major highway through Gaul. But Avignon’s real claim to fame came much later, in the Middle Ages, when things in the Church went…
Chateau Neuf du Pape would have to be one of the famous vineyard areas in France – and we were off the ship at Avignon for a visit and tasting. The young man who conducted the tour dazzled us with data about terroir (soil, climate, human interference) and things called Cru. Me, I’m a philistine….
We visited Tournon back in the days of covid, where we conducted our own tour of the town. That time we parked on the Tain-l’Hermitage side of the river. It was a lot warmer that day than today. Tournon itself has been important for centuries. It grew up as a fortified town on the right…
Vienne feels like a small town in France but it was once a major Roman powerhouse. Back in the Roman period, Vienne was one of the most important cities in Gaul. Its position on the Rhône made it a key transport and trade route, effectively a Roman highway linking the Mediterranean to the interior. Goods,…
On a day of low cloud, drizzle, and biting cold we headed off on a coach to visit the famous Cluny Abbey, once one of the most powerful institutions in Europe. I remembered Cluny from my medieval history studies at university, half a century ago. I was expecting something along the lines of Melk Abbey…
