After college, I never returned to my hometown often. My parents divorced when I was around 12 and then I shuffled between homes before I graduated high school. One of the best years I had with my mother was living with her when I was in graduate school in Connecticut, but sadly, in the last 25 years, we have only seen each other once or twice a year as we live on opposite coasts. The pandemic halted that to zero visits for years.
When I had the opportunity to sail aboard an 8-day river cruise with Viking from Paris to Normandy, I hoped my mother would join as a way for us to get to know one another again. My husband encouraged it since my mother is nearing 80 and as the years roll on, we realized this may be one of the last chances I’d have to travel and bond with her in close quarters.
To my surprise, my mom quickly responded, “My bags are packed.” She hadn’t been to Paris since she was pregnant with me, although, she didn’t know that at the time.
For The Love Of France
Our first day in Paris, I pushed my mom to walk many miles even though she just had knee surgery. She was a trooper as she didn’t want to miss any of the sites. From the classy Maison Hotel Albar Pont Neuf in a lively neighborhood minutes from the Louvre, I could easily take her to some of my favorite spots as I had just been to Paris with my husband for summer solstice dancing on the streets during Fete de la Musique.
After maneuvering our way through the crowds into the Louvre with the Skip the Line Pass on the GetYourGuide app, we relished in the sculptural masters of the time, admired grand-scale oil paintings the size of a wall, and snapped a selfie in front of the Mona Lisa. It was my mom’s first time seeing the 30-by-21-inch masterpiece with Mona’s moving eyes.
We meandered our way through the charming cobblestone Marais filled with boutique shops and cafés as I had to take her to the Carnavalet Museum and dine outside at Cafe Hugo. Seated under the 17th-century vaulted arches in Place Du Vosges, we rested our weary feet over an aperol spritz, onion soup, cheeses, and escargot, of course! My mom didn’t seem too keen on the snails but she shed tears of awe later that evening when we arrived at Sainte-Chapelle at sunset. Somehow, we managed to get escorted up a private entrance where the moving music coordinated with our arrival into the royal chapel that beamed with colors from the stained-glass windows in this intimate 13th-century Gothic-style beauty. We locked arms as we stared high at this godly spiritual experience.
Once on board the Viking Fjorgyn — one of the four Viking River Cruise Longships designed to navigate the Seine River — we clinked champagne to our good fortune atop of the ship under the Eiffel Tower before gliding away from Lady Liberty. My mother is a lifelong gardener, watercolor painter, travel lover, and is passionate about learning new things, so she was smiling ear to ear as we embarked. We were about to witness history come alive while making our own history. Following the footsteps of medieval kings, soldiers, heroines, and artists, this journey would take us back to a time where our favorite painters (Monet, Sisley, Renoir, van Gogh, and Pissarro) were young and rode the new train lines from Paris north to picturesque country towns and Normandy’s striking coastline in search of inspiration in the 1860s.
With less than 100 people aboard, the stately Scandinavian Longship felt more like a boutique hotel. We quickly made friends with guests over casual and fine-dining meals and eons of generously poured wine. There were even specialty dinner nights like the Taste of Normandy where chefs showcased local ingredients they picked up in each town. My super social mom quickly connected with others who wanted to dine with us on the terrace. This also enabled my mom and me to connect on a whole other level as stories we never knew about each other were shared over mealtimes, helping us cement our kinship.
In the mornings before arriving to a new port and taking the ship’s complimentary guided walking tours, we lay in bed in our stateroom to watch the French villages pass by, giving us a window into daily life of the idyllic rural French countryside. All rooms on this ship have balconies designed for guests to view the river’s culture, commerce, and creativity.
A grand 12th-century chateau carved into white chalk cliffs above the Seine greeted us on our first stop in La Roche Guyon. Here, we roamed gardens and climbed high into the castle’s medieval keep with dungeons and a pigeonnier tower — once a status symbol to let others know you were feasting on pigeons daily.
For The Love Of Heroes
On our third day in Rouen, symbols of Joan of Arc appeared everywhere as this was the place where she was wrongfully condemned of heresy and burned at the stake. Even in chilly rainy November, the town was bustling. Laden with over 700 half-timbered houses, Joan’s story from 1431 continued with a memorial pyre and Joan of Arc Church with a roof shaped like her hat. Joan’s own mother dedicated the rest of her life to restore her daughter’s name and 25 years after Joan’s brutal execution, she was declared innocent and a martyr thanks to the persistence and love of her mother.
Close by, we admired the facade of the hundred-spire Gothic Notre Dame Cathedral — represented by Monet in many paintings with its intricate lace-like limestone architecture that took 4 centuries to complete due to being halted during war times.
As the boat easily zoomed down the calm, curvy snake-like Seine to reach Normandy later in the trip, the rain seemed appropriate almost like tears as we honored 25,000 soldiers killed here fighting for our freedom. At the American Cemetery, a man nodded at me while he scrubbed the white crosses where over 9,000 crosses and stars of David face the U.S. Traipsing along the D-Day beaches, huddling to keep warm and thinking of the troops’ heroism, I collected some sand and seashells for my mom to take home as a reminder of this moment as she told me stories of my grandfather in World War II and how she was born while he was abroad. She reminded me of the sacrifices of her brother and our great Uncle Tat who was a prisoner of war in Germany. “Your grandmother (who is French Canadian) would have loved to have seen this,” she reiterated.
In another port, we poked around the narrow lane town of Les Andelys where full rainbows arched across the sky above the Chateau Gaillard, a Middle Ages castle built by Richard the Lionhart. After storming more castles and walking the bucolic grounds of Château de Malmaison, we snapped huge-smile selfies in front of Versailles. My mom exclaimed, “I can’t believe how many bucket-list dreams I am checking off in one trip!”
The river cruise not only was the perfect way for my mom (my own hero) to travel, as she was having trouble walking more than a few miles. But it also allowed us to slow down and not only appreciate the settings but to appreciate one another, and that, to me, is priceless.
Months later, my mom still reminisces about our last night in Paris where our cruise returned as our final farewell dinner consisted of French classics like steak frites and sole meuniere at the sophisticated and legendary Fouquet’s Brasserie opened in 1899. She deemed this meal “one of the best of her life” and that she will never forget cruising down the Champs Elysees with the shimmering fairytale holiday lights hung in the trees on either side of the boulevard.
