PARIS
You don’t need to speak French to sail on the new Joie de Vivre, cruising the Seine out of Paris. But you will know from your first step aboard, at the dock about a 20-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower, that you are in France.
With its French fabrics, foie gras, daily arrays of local cheeses, and its hallways dressed in early 1900s caricatures by artist George Goursat (known as Sem), the Joie de Vivre is true to its French intentions. It was designed by Uniworld Boutique River Cruises as a floating Paris boutique hotel.
I especially like the concept of a Paris vacation that starts and ends at a hotel docked in the middle of the city and cruises the Seine for a week in high Paris style. The ship stops for excursions to some of France’s travel favorites: Palace of Versailles, Monet’s home and garden at Giverny, the old town and Gothic cathedral of Rouen, the port at Honfleur, and the memorials on Normandy’s Atlantic Coast, scene of the invasion of Europe by Allied Forces in 1944.
