Along the Seine

It happened on Sunday, May 14...

It's Mother's Day! As if to celebrate "my" day, I began the day with a nice hotel breakfast. Soon after we gathered our belongings and boarded a bus bound for the S.S. Joie de Vivre, the Uniworld ship. This is the newest ship in their fleet and it is magnificent! Did I think to take any pictures of the ship? No! Luckily, other people (including Uniworld) have posted pictures, so I now share some with you!

410 feet long. 37.5 feet wide. 64 cabins. 52 crew to take care of a maximum of 128 passengers. We only had  96 passengers, including 16 travel agents. We wondered if our most excellent service was an effort to impress the agents.

The cabin - spacious with lots of storage! The top half of the window slides all the way down.

This is "La Cave du Vin". We attended a wine tasting here and a cooking class. 

The ship has a swimming pool - the green is the far edge of it. It has a pump so that you can manage laps. The unique thing about the pool is that it can be covered by a floor at the push of a button. Then, it becomes "Claude's" (pictured below). Claude's serves dinner and drinks.  

 

The ship has another dining option in the bow. They have a café menu offered almost all day.

This is a shot of the lounge. Comfortable seating for all. We met here each evening for an overview of the next day. Drinks are served at no additional charge!

I said I didn't take any pictures of the ship... but I just found this shot. I was intrigued by this pile of boxes... all filled with wine and liquor! Uniworld provides wine, beer and liquor for free! On our last cruise in 2010 we had free wine or beer with dinner. Now even drinks in the lounge are free! Our server said that over 30 bottles of wine are consumed at dinner. I know I did my share. The scale says so, too!

After we explored the ship we were treated to our first lunch in the dining room, a fabulous buffet. I don't recall what I ate, exactly, but it was all good! Then, after eating we took a short bus ride to a Seine River Cruise company and had an informative trip along the Seine. Come along with us!

Our river tour went from left to right, and back again.
Can you match the pictures to the images?

Oh, my gosh! Here we go again. After our Paris tour, while cleaning out a closet I came across the painting pictured below that I believe belonged to my grandfather. I didn't recognize the painting, until I reviewed the pictures from our Seine River cruise. There it is!! This is the L'église de la Madeleine, a Catholic church that was finally constructed around 1825. What fun to see it in person... and then in a painting from sometime in the late 1900's. 

Mais oui! Nous sommes à Paris!!