We would be transported from Nice by bus to a comfortable barge for the northbound trip from Arles to Saint-Jean-de-Losne from where we would travel by bus and train by land through Dijon, to Paris, through the Chunnel to London and then back to the US.
A private room! And it was, like all guest cabins on this barge (M.S.Arlenne) a room with a view! Sliding past my large cabin window I saw from near the waterline an ongoing panorama of idyllic French countryside. Not a freeway to be seen! And I had a sleeping bunk and an empty bunk for displaying my gouache sketches and a bathroom all to myself. I was in heaven!
There are accounts I could, and might, write about so many towns and ancient cities along the Rhone and about the Pont du Gard and an amazing little train that puffs through a steep valley*2 and the enchanting child I met in a back alley in Nice and the funny waiter who thought I was ordering a bucket of ice for cocktails rather than for my swollen ankle just out of a cast. Vignettes remembered as if they were dream segments, but I have evidence!! I have a log and I have photos and I have sketches. It really happened!
I was put at a dining table with four delightful widows-- fun-loving and wonderful company. There were memorable events even just in the tiny space that table occupied. Here's a small excerpt from a story I once tried to write:
Our table nestled next to the stairway down to the dining room from the upper deck. We didn't realize until three days into the journey that we sat above the wine cellar! This we discovered when the dashing waiter Etiènne appeared asking us with great decorum if we might be willing to be disturbed so that he could open a trap door beneath part of our table. They had run out of a certain type of wine. Fascinated, we stood aside as Etiènne pulled back the carpet, and lifted a hatch cover aside. It was the well-fleshed and pleasant Simone, in her very short skirt, whose job it was to climb down into the hole by an interior ladder. Was the blush because of the rigors of getting down into the hatch or because of the necessary exposure of her youthful legs? Mesmerizing to watch the process and to watch the watchers, including the young waiter. A can-can show, to be sure, and the face of the flushed young woman who popped up several times from the hole to hand wine bottles to Etiènne made it plain that the unearthing the correct wine had been something of a challenge. Finally out came Simone with a dimpling smile, again a flash of legs and then a moment of smoothing the apron. If she minded being the chosen wine-getter, she was very good natured about it. ...There are surely hundreds of such vignettes nudging me to write. If they tingle my gray matter a bit, then maybe they will interest others, maybe not. So I write for the doing of it and the joy it is to me.
Green Thumb
Post Scripts: *
*1 I didn't really get to know my snoring roommate very much until the last two days in Paris and the overnight in London before our flight home. She did not snore. I wonder whether I did? In any case, I presume she had enjoyed being put into solitary for the cruise, as I had.
*2 From another account of this railway found online:
Near Tournon, we board the Vivarais Railway, an ancient little steam engine hauling a dozen cars in various styles and states of repair through the Ardeche countryside. The American passengers sing Chattanooga Choo Choo as the train clickety-clacks along at an unhurried 30km/h, the steam whistle blowing. It is a slow but exhilarating ride through some of the wildest scenery I have seen in Europe, along deep gorges and past old stone buildings, arched aqueducts, fields of red poppies and grazing goats.
One of the passengers jokes to the walrus-mustachioed conductor, "Is this the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse)? He's heard it before, and quickly replies, "Oui, Train a Grande Vibration."
