Burgundy and Provence

Wednesday
Viviers

Viviers. You’ve heard of it? We hadn’t either, before we signed up for this trip. As it turns out, we enjoyed our morning there.

As had become our habit on this trip, Judy and I chose to go with separate groups, and we each enjoyed our experiences. The town isn’t large at all, and it’s sort of divided between two different levels. The older part of the town is on the hillside and top of a fairly high hill perhaps set back from the Rhône about 200 yards. The new part is on the flat banks of the river, subject to flooding in some years, where it shares space with some cultivated land that probably benefits from the same floods that sometimes cause damage to the buildings. C’est la vie, I suppose.

The highlighted activity for us in Viviers was an organ recital in the Cathedral, the smallest such designated church in France. To get to the Cathedral at the top of the hill, my group, with our guide Frances leading the way, walked along the “Allée du Rhône” to reach the town centre. Before we even left the dock, Frances told us about the limestone quarry we could see in the distance and the cement factory that was near the quarry. She also prepared us for the lack of people we would see in Viviers when she explained that most of the town’s residents worked elsewhere, many of them in the nearby nuclear power plant. I have to say, if I wanted to live in a quiet village, the equivalent of a “bedroom community” in south-central France, this would be a great choice.

We walked through a number of small streets and alleys to get to the top of the hill, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more picturesque medieval town. With people actually living in it. The narrow streets wouldn’t be much fun, and many of them weren’t really suited for vehicular traffic, but that was part of the charm. Admittedly, those streets were steep. The “Gentle Walkers” group even had a taxi to take them to the top of the hill.

When we reached the top, we found ourselves on a really nice flat area with not a lot of trees, a stone wall, and great views on three sides. Over one wall we could see the town below, terra cotta roofs at different angles making really cool patterns below. Beyond them were the newer buildings of the lower town, with a few towers thrown in for good measure. On the other sides we could see the river, freshly tilled areas of flat ground, the quarry and cement factory in the distance, and a surviving pre-WWII bridge. And we could look almost straight down on one of those other sides. Altogether fun, if a bit breezy.

The Cathedral itself is not the most impressive or charming building I’ve ever seen, but there were some beautiful tapestries in the chancel. There were also a few gaps where some had been stolen, it seems. The organ case was not particularly striking, and I learned later that the organ itself had been rebuilt and electrocuted in the 1950s. It’s a bit underwinded, to put it kindly, and overall the recital, by an organist who was playing one of these “tourist gigs” for the first time, had a little trouble with the instrument. However, after the recital I did enjoy going up to the tribune to talk with the organist and check out the organ a little.

Unfortunately, I stayed a little bit too long at that point, and my group had left the Cathedral quarters completely be the time I left the building. I’m sorry I missed the visit to her home, which people said later was really nice, but I had a nice time on my own walking back down the ship on my own. I even had a nice conversation with the restaurant manager from the River Victoria, the ship we were on when we were in Russia in June. She was finishing up a four-week trip on a Different Uniworld ship, part of their program to bring the River Victoria experience up to the level of their other European cruiises. In one of those crazy things that happens from time to time, Judy came along a little bit later and had a similar experience talking with her.