Day 35 - Monday 16th October - Cruise

Another beautifully sunny day ahead of us. All the cool weather clothes haven't been used at all. After breakfast the entire load of passengers were divided into groups and with several guides we set off on foot, no buses, in to visit the little medieval town (yes, another one) of Viviers. Our guide was Pierre and what a wonderful character and excellent guide he was! He was a comedian and made lots of corny jokes which added to our entertainment. He is a ballroom dancing teacher and came 6th in the European  championships years ago with his wife. Pierre walked backwards a lot of the time so he didn't have his back to us, up the steep streets of this tiny town, which was impressive. He pointed out all the interesting buildings as we passed them, talked about the various styles of architecture and was thoroughly entertaining and very knowledgeable. We were making our way to the top of the hill to see the smallest working cathedral in France, St Vincent Cathedral. This cathedral once had 6 beautiful tapestries hanging in it made in the middle ages but there were only 4 hanging. Years ago 3 were stolen, 2 were found in a cave in Italy recently but the 3rd has never been found.  When the Italian police found out where they were from, they brought them back and were promptly arrested by the French police on arrival because they didn't have any documentation for them. Pierre got us to sit in the pews while he told us the history of the cathedral and we were soon joined by all the other groups. Then they introduced the celebrated organist who played a lovely private organ concert for us. I'm not usually a fan of organ music but this was just beautiful. After the concert we walked out to a terrace at the back of the church where we had amazing views over this pretty little town and the scenic countryside. We took lots of photos then took a short cut back down via set of steps after set of steps to we got to the square where Pierre pointed out some interesting things including large holes at the base of several of the Sycamore trees (we call them plane trees). He explained that during WWII the Allies put ammunition boxes at the base of these trees to mark the way for the soldiers to find their way to the river. The ammunition boxes were never removed and caused a disease to eat away part of the base creating these very large holes in the trunk. One was big enough for Pierre to stand up in, he said he used to play hide and seek in that tree with his mum. He told us that during the war his mother & father hid a Jewish doctor on their roof while a German officer lived in their house. He survived the war and was their family doctor for many years. His uncle was shot by the Germans when he was only 20 because he wouldn't tell them where the doctor was hiding. We wandered down their "Champs Elysees", an avenue lined on both sides with Sycamore trees, which led us back to the ship, the same route the soldiers took, we farewelled Pierre and thanked him for a wonderfully entertaining tour. Back on board we headed to the Crystal Diningroom for lunch. Then after lunch it was time for our 2nd excursion for the day. It's hard work being on holidays. So this was the day we are going to do the kayaking trip down the Ardeche River through the deepest gorge in Europe but the kayaking companies closed the season early,  maybe because they had such a long hot busy summer. We were disappointed but nothing is guaranteed. Anyway we then chose the trip to the Ardeche National Park and a visit to the Caverne Pont d'Arc which was absolutely fabulous. The drive on the Tourist Road was brilliant and we stopped at a couple of scenic lookouts for the most spectacular views you could imagine over the gorge and the river. At one of the stops we saw the famous Pont d'Arc over the Ardeche River, a large  natural rock bridge formed when the Ardeche River broke through a narrow gap. It's 59m wide and 34m high and a magnificent sight to photograph. From here we continued on to the Caverne Pont d'Arc also known as Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Caverne. This cave was discovered in 1994 by 3 speleologists, cave explorers, led by Jean-Marie Chauvet. In it they found some of the best preserved cave drawings in the world and the oldest in Europe, some dating back 37,000 years. The cave has been sealed off to the public  and a replica cave was built at a cost of €50m and opened in 2015. This is what we saw and once inside you would never have thought you weren't inside the real thing. It was fabulous! !! Reproduced down to the tiniest detail. It's the largest cave replica in the world and the art is reproduced full size, with even the temperature,  darkness, acoustics and humidity reproduced. What a fabulous experience this was! In the gift shop I bought a foldout series of photos of all the cave drawings we saw because you can't take photos inside the cave. Then it was back on the buses to head for the ship which had sailed down to St.-Etienne-des-Sorts to meet us so that our ride back wasn't so long. When we were listening to Port Talk we sailed off to our next port, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. After dinner we were entertained by Véronique de Zan who sang some French songs. She was a lady in her 60s who was quite flirtatious with the men so John was glad we were sitting in a position where he wouldn't be picked for audience participation. The singing was nice but not good enough to buy her CD. When she finished her show we had a few dances to Richard's music then fell into bed yet again after a very long day.