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Part 10

It has been a while since my last installment, so as a refresher, in Part 9 we visited the Château Gaillard where I could not climb the hill to the castle, but Pete did, and got some breathtaking views of the French countryside. Next we stopped at Conflans, and Pete visited the Palace of Versailles. From there we departed Conflans and continued our course towards Paris. On the way we saw lots of live-aboard boats docked at various places along the river, and we finally ended up back at the quay from which we departed 7 days earlier.

Some of the bridges in Paris were very close to the water, forcing the crew to lower the things on the sun deck,
and even lowering the bridge roof to about 4 feet from the deck. The bridge was a small structure that was
collapsible to about half it's height.

This bridge was not as low as some, as we were allowed to go up on the sun deck for it.
But for some bridges, the sun deck was closed to passengers.

Here we are approaching the quay we were moored to seven days ago.

The captain had an interesting little box with controls for maneuvering the motors which allowed him to move
the ship sideways, very slowly, until the deck hands could get lines attached to mooring cleats on the quay.

The mooring lines are actually very strong steel cables, which were difficult to manage.

Our last night on board the Viking Spirit we decided to celebrate with our usual martini before dinner. Big surprise.

That evening before retiring, we went up on the sun deck to watch the sunset, and get a few more photos of the Eiffel Tower.

Of course you can't come to Paris and NOT take a photo like this. LOL
I didn't quite get it perfect, but you get the idea.

Pete is using his telescoping camera extender to take photos of us. People look at us like we are crazy.

I actually think that they wished they had one of these devices. It is very cleaver, and practical.

This is David, our bar tender, who would bring our martinis to us each evening just as we sat down to
dinner. The bar was in the bow of the boat, and the dining room was in the stern, so he had to walk
the entire length of the ship, balancing two martinis on his tray. What a trooper! David is Hungarian,
and besides being an excellent bar tender, he is also a very nice person.

It was a great week, and now we were to travel by motor coach from Paris to Chalon-sur-Saône, and from there we would be boarding the Viking Neptune for our passage down the Saône and Rhône Rivers, eventually arriving at Avignon seven days from now.

The trip by motor coach was fairly comfortable, and took about half the day. The seats were comfortable, and the windows were large, giving us great visibility of the country side as we headed South East from Paris.

We made a pit stop at a little roadside café, and it was there that we saw the
"second" biggest dog we had ever seen, paraphrasing Maxwell in Get Smart.

Do you have any idea how much this guy would eat in a day? And if he ever became angry with you - LOOK OUT!

Further along in the trip we stopped at a small town that is apparently famous for their chocolate factory. What was amazing was that you could go into their sales room and eat as much chocolate as you wished, and there was no charge. This was definitely chocolate heaven. I didn't think I would ever say that I couldn't eat another bite of chocolate, but here I did. We bought some to take home, DUH! And no, I didn't eat any of it on board the ship. I was sorry I didn't take my camera with us when we visited the chocolate factory, because nobody will ever believe my story without actually seeing me stuffing my face with chocolate. It was Sssssooooooo GOOD!

We eventually arrive at Chalon-sur-Saône and are dropped off at the Viking Neptune. After we got settled in, and had lunch, our Program Manager took us on a walk through Chalon-sur-Saône. It is an important town of the Gallic tribe Aedui, and in Roman times it was called Cabillonum. The site was selected by Julius Caesar as a food store facility.

Its café-lined city square is a delight to explore. Just off the square is its beautiful
church of Saint Vincent, which was built in the 13th and 14th centuries.

In the 6th century, King Guntram chose Chalon as the capital of Burgundy. Over the centuries, it became
an impressive city protected by walls and towers. Timber-framed houses from this period still stand.

They say that the quay and the canal make for fine photo ops. And when we do snap photos in Chalon, we'll have one of its sons to thank for our ability to do so. Nicéphore Niépce invented photography here, producing the first image in 1822. A museum in town is dedicated to his life and work.

The narrow streets are reminiscent of many Roman towns throughout Europe. They are just wide enough for chariots.

In the next episode we will be stopping at Mâcon, and I will share with you some of the history of Burgundy.