We're on a boat!

Jun 19

Written By Mavis

I am catching up on my blog after a few days on the river cruise. We took the train to Lyon where the ship was docked. The train ride was wonderful.

We had brought along a Rose' and purchased some sandwiches and fruit for lunch. As we set it out, our neighbors across the aisle -- 3 boys from the UK (their accents sounded straight out of Harry Potter) -- said, "That's traveling in style."

Sandwiches, fruit & wine on the train.

The scenery out the window was beautiful and bucolic.

Not always the best photos through the train window, but still pretty.

The instructions said that the ship could be at one of three places on the Rhone River in Lyon, and we should call to find out where. One of us did do that and knew the name of the place, but getting to it with an Uber was rather difficult.

We had a street address but when our driver went to turn towards that address on the street, we were sure it was wrong because it was above the river. After going around the block, the driver stopping to ask, and much discussion, we ended up deciding the driver was probably right but we were still not on the river or at the dock where we could see a Viking ship we figured was ours. The driver let us off and we started figuring out how to get down there.

There were stairs but with all our suitcases that wasn't going to work. Susan went down the stairs and motioned and yelled to us that there was a ramp further down. Off we went, 3 tall women laden with rolling suitcases down the street, and finally down a huge ramp. As we were rolling along, I was reminded of the movie "Out of Towners." The ramp was quite far from the ship. The walk looked daunting. Fortunately, Susan got two muscular sailors to come rescue us. Very nice.

Finally, we were boarding the ship! We were greeted with lemon-lavendar scented washcloths. The sailors carried our suitcases down to our rooms and thus began our days of river cruising and pampering.

After settling in, we had our first delicious dinner and went to bed.