French cities and towns always look as if they must be very busy and productive, but not on the day you happen to visit them. They never really are, and that is their charm, and witness to a laid-back lifestyle others either envy or find frustrating.

Lyon was no exception, despite its being the third-biggest city in France and billed as the country’s culinary capital. We arrived on a Saturday and struggled to find un sandwich and a beer on the banks of the Rhône, the river where we were to board the Swiss Pearl and sail 320km downstream, through 11 locks, to Arles in Provence.

Far from having us laze deliciously bored on deck watching the countryside and walled medieval villages roll by, the journey was a thrilling exploration of rural France, visiting vineyards, villages, castles, palaces, churches and even a mental asylum. It all went by in a sensory overload of beauty: golden sandstone villages, mauve lilacs, blue irises and red roses, pink light from medieval windows splashing down ribbed columns in ancient churches, organ music rolling around gothic vaults, vegetables and fruit piled high in street markets, and landscapes straight out of Van Gogh paintings. We spent a lot of time walking, even more watching beautiful people, and yet even more indulging in glorious French wines. Not quite what I had expected from a river cruise: I left stimulated and pleasantly tired.

Sur Le Pont D’Avignon: Passengers on the deck of the Swiss Pearl as she approaches the famous Saint Bénézet bridge in Avignon. The bridge was finished in 1185, it was 920m long, had 22 arches and was four metres wide. Today only 4 arches remain, most having collapsed in the 17th century

 

But first we explored Lyon, an old and beautiful city on the confluence of two rivers: le Rhône (male, and carrying clear alpine waters from Lake Geneva in Switzerland) and la Saône (female, and carrying muddier waters from Lorraine). Only the French could make that sexy: downtown there is a bass-relief sculpture of a male and female figure merging in water.

Then we headed back up the Saône to the town of Trevoux and the Beaujolais region for a little wine-tasting on Pascal Gayot’s Domaine de la Logère, perhaps to prove that there is much more to Beaujolais wines that the gimmicky nouveau launched on the third Thursday of November. There is indeed much more, but it was a slightly odd vineyard visit with Gayot trying valiantly to explain how he grows gamay grapes: the mostly American tourists were obsessed with how much sulphur got into the wine.

By now I was more obsessed with heat and the fact that I had failed to pack any shorts. On a lunch stop in the bustling town of Villefranche (yes, this one was), I found a pair in a trendy main-street shop for a mere € 85 (R1000)! Slip-slops by Cardin cost another € 35. Tip: pack for the weather of your destination, not home.

Back on board we returned through Lyon and on to the Rhône. A former Rhine cruise boat, the Swiss Pearl has just two decks of cabins and a sun-deck, but only just passed under many of the bridges on the Rhône, even with the captain’s bridge lowered into the first deck. Nervous East European crew would rush down the length of the sun-deck telling dizzy dears with cameras at the ready to lie down or have the living daylights bashed out of them by a gargoyled bridge passing overhead. Great fun.

Poppy day: An olive grove outside the hospital Saint Rémy, where Vincent van Gogh lived for a year .

Also fun are the new radio-linked earpieces used by tour groups to ease the life of yelling guides. You can simply wander around in the general vicinity while she rabbits on about Roman temples and amphitheatres, bishops and ancient bathhouses. It’s highly disconcerting for the guides, who have no idea where their group is or whether anyone is listening.

Thirty-two kilometres south of Lyon we stopped at the Roman town of Vienne, which still has a Corinthian- columned Roman temple and the sedately crumbling cathedral of Saint Maurice, then Tournon, Viviers (with the nearby medieval hilltop town of Grignan) and Roquemaure. From here another bus trip to the village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the wine appellation of the same name, and more wine-tasting. The ruined papal chateau, a country retreat built by Pope Jean XXII of Avignon in 1320, which towers above the village, was the summer home of popes through the 14th century.

The stunning city of Avignon was our next stop, but not before we had cruised up to and around the famous broken 13th- century Saint Bénézet bridge below the Popes’ Palace — the Pont d’Avignon sung about in a folk song dating from the 15th century.

Due to political insecurities in Rome, in 1308 Pope Clement V, a former archbishop of Bordeaux, moved the papacy to Avignon in Provence. A number of popes ruled the church from here for close on a century, and the result is the largest Gothic-styled palace in the world. (Gregory IX returned to Rome in 1376, but until 1417 there was a pope in Avignon and one in Rome — the Great Schism). The palace has since been used as everything from a storeroom to a garrison, but over recent decades it has been restored to some of its former glory, a warren of halls, chapels, cloisters and rooms worthy of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, many of them still decorated with extraordinarily worldly frescoes. The papal bedroom is dark green with birds and animals hidden in the foliage, his study next door covered with hunting scenes.

Morning chat: An old lady greets the communal gardener in the golden sandstone village of Oingt in Beaujolais

Perhaps one disadvantage of cruising in France is the temptation to eat all meals on board, even if the dinners take an interminable two to three very social hours to get through. You just know there are gastronomic adventures in every port, eluding you, as fine as the food was on board. Only once, in Avignon, did we decide to skip Dutch chef Teus Schaeurwater’s farewell dinner and dine at Le Lutrin on the place du Palais — some French patés, an entrecôte steak and bottle of Châteauneuf — the floodlit stone towers and arches of the great palace etched golden shapes against the blue-black sky.

For the rest, you could always buy a baguette from a boulangerie and break off crusty chunks as you listened to the guide 100m away rabbit on about Roman temples and amphitheatres, bishops and ancient bathhouses, or buy punnets of the sweetest strawberries in street markets to take back to your cabin for late-night snacks.

River cruising is so different from sea cruising in that you are off the boat daily, and so not forced into anything. Some passengers skipped some tours and simply relaxed, some could always be found on deck for a drop of wine after dinner and deep into the night, lubricating tales from Cincinatti, Miami, Wisconsin and Washington — and American politics. All were wonderful Americans: they owned passports and were interested in the world. Others, such as captain Yvan Fischer, could be found there in the pre- dawn morning, having a smoke and contemplating the next bridge and how many passengers would have to duck.

Many of the passengers had started the tour in Paris, sailed the Rhône and were to bus to Barcelona. Others, like me, were only there for the cruise, and it ended in Arles seven busy days after we had boarded in Lyon.

Arles was perhaps the highlight, a small walled city built at the point where the Rhône starts to split into its delta and the Camargue, with a Roman amphitheatre still used for bullfights, a warren of narrow streets, and echoes of its most famous but then unwanted resident, Vincent van Gogh.

He moved here in 1888 and, although the house near the railway station where he lived no longer exists, you can recognise the street and other buildings from his painting of it. Likewise, the familiar Night Café with yellow awning and starry blue sky: it’s still there, trading on its fame and photographed by every visitor. And there are nice big boards with colour prints of the scenes he painted, where he painted them, just in case you did not go through the Van Gogh stage of art appreciation.

Far more moving was a visit to the mental hospital in a former monastery near Saint Rémy — where Van Gogh was treated between 1889-1890 — about 30km from Arles. It is still a functioning clinic but I was not sure if one could photograph the inmates. I did.

You could troop through the courtyard he painted, upstairs to the sparse room with bed, chair and window he painted.

Outside were the irises he painted, gnarled olive trees and cornfields, cypress trees and strangely lumpy mountains, which he also painted. You can only see them through his eyes, bursting with life and flaming into the blue sky. Nowhere can you be closer to Van Gogh.

On our last morning in Arles before flying out of Marseille, we explored the town again and found a massive food market — at least 500m of roadway lined with stalls selling what looked like perfect cherries, apricots, plums, ribbed tomatoes and all kinds of asparagus, artichokes, breads, pastries, meat and charcuterie, fish, olives, chocolates — it seemed endless.

I sat on a bench eating a bag of sweet, red cherries and watching the old ladies with their shopping bags indulging in the bounties of life as if it were their ancient right. Maybe it is: few nations take food as seriously. We left with none of it, content with the memories.

 

If you go ...

Amadeus Waterways is Europe’s leading deluxe-cruise operator, offering a choice of 12 cruise itineraries on the 5000km-long river network through 13 countries on eight 150-passenger ships from Amsterdam to Budapest. They also cruise in France from Lyon to Arles in the south, and from Porto along the Douro River in Portugal.

 

For Discounted rates contact  RiverDiscounts.com  800-640-4899