The best way to see the history, architecture and wildlife of the Rhone is by riverboat. Shirley Linde, editor of SmallShipCruises.com, shares her experiences:

We had the day to stroll about town and discovered...a little open train that goes from the tourist information bureau to the Papal Palace, returning through narrow cobblestone back streets of the old town section, all for the price of a few francs. Even if you want to avoid going through the palace...display of wealth and adornment from the series of popes who lived and rebuilt and rebuilt here...look at the architecture, listen to a musician fill the courtyard with haunting flute music, stroll the gardens, and see the spectacular views of the Rhone River in the valley below. We saw the almost intact medieval wall still surrounding the city, and the Pont d’Avignon bridge, its arches partly spanning the river, the rest destroyed by various wars. (If you want to go out of town you can see the Pont du Gard bridge built by Agrippa in 19 BC as part of an extensive Roman aqueduct system to provide fresh water. If you have time you can go to the Musee Calvet, an art museum in an 18th century private mansion with paintings and sculptures from the 15th to the 20th century. )

Rhone River

The cruise actually started in Lyon. The boat will go on the Rhone down almost to the Mediterranean, and back up to Lyon, doing different port stops in each direction and passing through various famous wine regions …Chateauneuf-du-Pape … Beaujolais … Maconnais … Bourgogne (Burgundy). 

Monday --Cruising on a riverboat on the Rhone was like going back and forth in a time machine. Romans traveled this river, and we saw many of their structures still standing. Medieval buildings were in view along the banks. Old castles and their fortifications loomed over the river. Then a few miles down river were nuclear power plants.  I was traveling with an artist, so adding to the impact of the trip was the fact that we were visiting the towns where van Gogh, Cézanne and others lived and painted.

Camargue plain and Arles

Tuesday -- We awoke in Arles and after breakfast took a bus tour through the Camargue area, the strip of land formed by the main Rhone River and its branches and often flooded. This is low-lying shifting land, often swampy, dotted with lagoons and waterways. There were many fields of sunflowers and paddies of rice. This is the area where Camargue bulls are bred for bull fights. We saw several of the black bulls and stopped to see some Camargue cowboys at work, riding the white horses that formerly roamed wild in the area. The area is a wildlife preserve and there were many egrets and heron and in one place a lake with a flock of several hundred flamingoes. The major stop was Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a little town on the Mediterranean where many gypsies come. Indeed there was group of musicians playing gypsy music in the town square to entertain us as we wandered the streets and browsed the shops.

We were back at the boat for lunch, then in the afternoon walked the town of Arles. Vincent van Gogh for a while lived and painted here and the fun was to compare what you saw of actual buildings and bridges and fields of flowers with the images of them painted by the artist. We could see the sunflower fields that van Gogh painted, and the very bridges and town plazas that were in his paintings. He sat in this courtyard café, and there was his yellow house, and there the sunflowers, and there the bridge. It added extra meaning to what we saw. Ceramic shops, pastries … everything seemed artistically presented.

Viviers

Wednesday -- We explored the quiet town of Viviers, with its medieval buildings, stone walls, and cobblestone streets barely changed from centuries ago when they were built. It was easy to imagine oneself walking these same streets hundreds of years ago, going through the same narrow winding alleyways. That tower was built in the 11th Century, that gate in the 14th century; the plague was here; French Revolutionists met in that building; those old church tapestries were given as a gift by Napoleon.

Lyon

Thursday -- We docked in the tiny village of Trevoux. We are on the River Saone now. Today we took a bus tour of Lyon, since Trevoux is just outside of Lyon. Traveling the area was again like traveling through time. There were Gothic and Renaissance houses of the 16th century, then at the top of a hill with a panoramic view of the city is a 19th century basilica, and a few steps away we were back 2000 years to a Roman amphitheater. Indeed, there is archeological evidence that there were people living here more than 5000 years ago. Later we visited a silk manufacturing shop, L’Atelier de Soierie and we all bought lovely hand-painted silk scarves. Lyon has been a center of silk manufacturing since the 16th century.

Macon

Friday -- We were in Macon, still on the Saone, in the middle of the wine-producing country where Beaujolais meets Maconnais. The climate is milder here than in the northern areas of Burgundy, and the wines slightly different in flavor. A bus tour went to visit wineries and the palace home of local poet Pierreclos. We walked through the town starting from where we were docked by a stone bridge built in the 11th century. The museum was a prison during the French Revolution. There is a wooden house here built about 1500. The afternoon was spent with everyone gathered once more on the top deck, viewing the shores of the Saone River as we cruised our way back to Lyon. We went through more locks, saw new and medieval homes side by side along the shores, the wildly painted restaurant of Paul Bocuse, and then joined the Rhone again. We docked back in Lyon in time for a stroll to see the lights of he city.

For more information on cruising in France visit www.SmallShipCruises.com -- the biggest website in the world on small ships, with information on hundreds of ships and cruises all over the world, including adventure cruises, luxury cruises, barges, sailing ships, riverboats, yacht charters, and ships to use as floating hotels for special events. Free newsletter.

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