Activities offered on board and on shore
After dinner on the second night, I struck up a conversation with Willem, the Dutch captain on the U’s sister ship. We went upstairs to watch the French captain thread the 360-foot-long (110-metrelong) boat through the needlethin locks. Willem told me about his first full season on the A, which sails on the Rhine and Danube rivers.
He said some itineraries were doing better than others, such as Amsterdam to Frankfurt.
Uniworld had to cancel two trips from Amsterdam to Regensburg because of low attendance, which he attributed to younger cruisers’ unfamiliarity with the port towns.
I asked him if he thought the new brand would succeed. He said he hoped so. He had helped paint the former River Baroness black and did not care to spend the winter returning the vessel to its original white.
“Punch it, Boris,” Sabrina shouted at her co-U Host, as we hit an open section of bike trail.
I was on the first of three guided bike rides and the second official activity of the day in Rouen, one of four ports we would visit over the week. Sabrina had kicked off the morning with an orientation walk through the medieval town. Then she set us free to chase down the three Cs of Normandy: Camembert, cider and Calvados. Make that four, if you count the churches in Victor Hugo’s city of “a hundred spires.”
Earlier in the trip, Sabrina had issued a warning: If you have never biked before, now was not the time to try it. (Ditto for kayaking, one of the U Time outings.) Cycling in France is challenging, yet exhilarating. In Rouen, we skirted tourists frozen in place outside Rouen Cathedral and dodged students streaming out of the University Hospital.
In Giverny, I slalomed around visitors focused on the floral arrangements in Monet’s hometown rather than the road rules. In Paris, the ride from the Eiffel Tower to Notre Dame required quick reflexes and steely nerves. One of the many hazards: the Minnesota grandmother and granddaughter, who I almost crashed into by Place de la Concorde.
“It’s quite energetic, isn’t it?” Mavis, an 88-year-old Briton who avoided the bikes, said of the cruise itinerary.
In addition to the shore excursions, the crew organized several diversions to keep the kids amused, if not necessarily out of trouble.
For the mixology class, Polish bartender Andrew taught us how to make a Cosmopolitan, an OldFashioned and a non-alcoholic drink with cranberry, citrus and ginger beer.
“Shot, shot, shot,” a Canadian chanted when it was time to pour the vodka into the martini glass.
The empties were cleared in time for the impressionism painting and wine workshop, which was held at the even-early-for-amimosa hour of 10:30 a.m. Each workspace contained brushes, watercolour kits and a thick piece of paper trimmed in masking tape. (Remove it and you have a white border.) Several participants immediately chose their subjects; others waited for the wine to kick in. Vanessa, a millennial from Singapore, pulled up an iPhone photo of the buffet; Michelle selected a row of half-timbered homes she had seen in Rouen. Martha, a retired nurse from Pittsburgh, sketched the pastoral scene outside the window, until it started to disappear from view. “My inspiration is floating away,” she exclaimed as the boat departed Les Andelys for Vernon.
Carmen was one of the first cruisers to complete her painting. She held up a Monet-like landscape and her fourth glass of wine.
“I am more of a wine drinker than a painter,” the flight attendant from San Diego said.
Dancing was the primary afterhours activity. We had DJ Anger BeatsZZZ spinning tunes one night and a silent disco on another. Boris explained how the latter worked. Each headset contained three channels featuring different genres of music. Switch between pop, techno and Latin, and dance, dance, dance.
Except that few did, at first. The Chilean dad travelling with his family air-drummed on the table. A quartet played foosball to their chosen soundtrack.
I joined a group on the couch, where we wriggled our limbs but wouldn’t commit to full-body dancing.
However, one song freed us from our private music boxes. Without breaking the silence, we spelled out Y-M-C-A on the dance floor.
Nearly every day I asked the U Hosts if tonight was the night, and nearly every day they told me not yet. But on the penultimate night, the answer changed. After five days of gliding from port to port, we were back in Paris, where we would remain for the remainder of the cruise.
The risk of banging my head on a low bridge was gone. I could finally sleep outdoors, beneath the kleig-bright skies of the City of Light.
The staff pitched the orangeand-black tents for us, tying them to an aft railing so we wouldn’t blow away. In each one, they built
a nest out of a sleeping pad, duvet, two pillows and a sleep sack. And then they left us alone.
After midnight, Michelle, Jim and I climbed the stairs to the top deck to go to bed. We each packed a few supplies.
I brought an extra pillow, a fleece and a Thermos of tea; they carried up a box of wine.
I slept on the Seine side. The night was silent and still. Through my half-moon window, I could see the Eiffel Tower, which peered at me with glowing eyes. Behind my tent, a replica of the Statue of Liberty hoisted her torch without complaint.
There were a few mild interruptions: a garbage truck dropped a large bag of glass bottles nearby and, when I attempted to make a bathroom run, I realized I had locked myself on the deck. Security came to the rescue, without a trace of a smirk.
In the morning, I heard Jim and Michelle head down for breakfast. About an hour later, I followed them.
I walked through the lobby in my pyjamas, perfectly acceptable attire for U and me.