PROVENCE TO PARIS

In 2018, my wife Marianne and I embarked on a Rhine River cruise, something we had long dreamed about but never really expected to happen.

When it came time for our cruise, severe drought in Germany meant that much of the distance would be covered not floating past historic castles but on a highway, by bus, as we detoured around the Rhine all the way from Strasbourg to the Netherlands.

The river tour company, AmaWaterways, gave us a generous credit toward a future tour, and we booked one… for 2020. A global pandemic put a stop to that, and did so again in 2021. In 2022, we couldn’t make a European trip work, but AmaWaterways was kind enough to extend our credit through 2023. Finally, in September 2023, days before our anniversary, we were on our way to Provence to fulfill our dreams of an indulgent river cruise — this time on France’s Rhône River, with days before and after the cruise to explore Provence, Versailles, and Paris.