River Cruise Diary – Tournon, France

After extolling European river cruising in 2020, I posted twelve stories (June 2 to November 20, 2020) from what was then, the most recent trip, our fourth, which sailed the Rhine and Moselle Rivers. The next trip to detail was our first, which sailed the smaller Rhone River in 2006. The most recent post, the sixth on this trip, appeared June 18, 2022.

Sorry that I abandoned that travelogue midway as my attention returned to more graves, state houses, ballparks and election ranting. The rest of this trip, my first time in France, included terrific stops in Lyon, the Burgundy wine country, and Paris. But before that, there was a less-than-exhilarating stop in Tournon, and true to the journalistic standards we have at Images and More, it is reported here.

Tournon at Night (24 April 2006)

Completed in 1825, by engineer Marc Seguin, Europe’s first

suspension bridge with iron cables spans the Rhone River.

Unlike the many suspension bridges we see in the U.S.,

it has a single tower midway across the channel.

Statue of Marc Seguin, Tournon, France (24 April 2006)

After touring Viviers, we sailed upstream to dock in Tournon for the night. This is a tidy town of 10,000, named for its towers. There was no formal sightseeing here because this was the place where passengers are met by local residents and escorted to their home-hosted dinners. This popular feature of the cruise operators is appreciated by the guests, who are briefly immersed in French language and local culture. The hosts are also interested to meet Americans and practice their English...most of them, anyway.

Tournon Castle (24 April 2006)

Built on the ruins of a tenth-century fortress, Tournon Castle

is now a museum and exhibition center.

Becky and I (along with two other couples) had a different kind of evening. Our host, a single mom with two daughters, ages ten and three, lived in a very small apartment with a tiny dining room. While the food was edible, the space was cramped and young Inez dominated the evening. The meal lasted until 11:00 PM. Between that and the cat and the nine, caged, Chilean squirrels (pets or food?), our patience was tested. It was great to walk in the night air and make our way back to the boat. We might have been the last group to return.

The next morning, as we sailed toward Lyon, all the passengers shared wonderful stories of their experiences from the night before. There were tales of fascinating homes, interesting people and references to local culture, personal vineyards, and history. The six of us agreed we had nothing positive to contribute to the discussion and remained silent. After we privately offered feedback to the tour guides, Grand Circle removed our host from the roster of local families.

While this was the low point of the trip, what we saw of Tournon was lovely and the remaining days on the river and in Paris were spectacular so, hang in there with me.

Airplane Window Seats - An Update

News Flash – TEN years ago, I posted a complaint about flying in a window seat with no window. Little did I know my seven readers got a glimpse into the future. Recently, the Washington Post reported that a class action lawsuit has been filed against two airlines for charging extra for window seats when the seats have no windows.   

Seat 15A or The Closet with No View (21 August 2015)

Silly me. When Boeing designed and built their planes, they added windows with the reasonable notion that they would line up with the rows of seating. However, the carriers have taken that basic plane body and cram-squeezed as many seats into that space as humanly tolerable. Of course, seats no longer align with windows. Get used to it. The airlines’ response to the recent challenge is to identify certain places where ductwork and electrical conduits are located. Please, child.

Older flyers can remember when there were two seats on either side of the aisle. Then it became three and two. Now, only the puddle-jumper, short-haul planes have fewer than six seats in every row.

I imagine it would be easier to avoid this litigation by simply knowing the seating plans in each plane and X-out those seats that no longer line up with a window, then stop charging extra for the insult. How hard would that be? Certainly, it is less costly than paying lawyers to defend your deception. Apparently, other airlines do that.

We’ll see where this goes. In the meantime, stay with Images and More for a head start on what should make you nuts.

Ballparks - # 27 - Coors Field, Denver, Colorado

8/18/25

Coors Field (16 August 2025)

A summer getaway took us to Denver to visit old and new friends. The lowly Colorado Rockies were home and the league-leading Dodgers began a four-game series the night I added Coors Field to my life list. While the Rockies already have a hundred losses this season, they split the series with the Dodgers after winning this game with an exciting ninth inning walk-off hit. The box score can be found at the link above.

Cornerstone, Coors Field (18 August 2025)

Coors Field was built in the Lower Downtown (LoDo) neighborhood of Denver. The team played its first two seasons in Mile High Stadium, also the home of the NFL Denver Broncos.

The Colorado Rockies began as an expansion team in 1993. In 1992, major league baseball had two divisions in each league. The American League’s East and West Divisions each had seven teams. The National League’s two divisions had six teams so the Rockies joined, along with the Florida (now Miami) Marlins, and the two leagues then organized into three divisions to better spread the teams geographically…and expand the playoffs…to make more money…and extend the season further toward the winter. Five years later, the game expanded again to its current roster of thirty teams when the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays joined the game.

(Modest) Wall of Fame, Coors Field (18 August 2025)

Like many other ballparks, Coors has a place of honor for the retired uniform numbers of star players. Like all other venues, Jackie Robinson’s number 42 is included. The ‘KSM’ honors team president Keli Scott McGregor who died suddenly in 2010 at age 47. The ‘17’ and ‘33’ recognize Todd Helton and Larry Walker, respectively. Shame we in the east did not see much of these two…who had fantastic careers with a mediocre team in an inconvenient time zone.

Both players are in baseball’s Hall of Fame. Helton, with a career batting average of .316, played first base for seventeen seasons. Walker, also a career .300 hitter and a Canadian by birth, had an awesome run. In the three seasons, 1997-99, Walker batted over .360, something no player had done since 1929-31. As I write this, the Dodger, Freddy Freeman, is leading the National League with an average of .300. We may see a league leader finish with an average below .300. This makes Walker’s three-season run over .360 even more remarkable.

Bleacher Wilderness, Coors Field (18 August 2025)

Instead of a dark wall in straight-away center field (every ballpark has some alternative to brightly clothed fans so batters can better see incoming pitches), the field has a living representation of the Rockies environment with evergreen trees and water features.

Dodger Blue Everywhere, Coors Field (18 August 2025)

It’s pretty clear that Dodger fans are everywhere. I don’t know if it’s their long storied history or the Big City vibe or their origins in New York (the Center of the Universe for many). Just as their fans outnumbered the locals in Oakland last year (as Yankee fans did when I attended the Angels game in 2022), Dodger Blue was clearly evident across the stadium this night.

Even non-baseball fans know that the altitude here makes Coors a park known for home runs and scoring. To address that (and present a better case when you try to recruit pitchers), the fences have been raised and moved back to give Coors the biggest outfield in the game…thus creating the park with more doubles and triples than most. Also, because it is the dry air more than the altitude that makes balls fly far, since 2002, a humidor room has been installed to store baseballs in an environment that mitigates that effect.

Coors Field (18 August 2025)

Again, due to its short history, few notable events have occurred here. In 2016, Ichiro Suzuki notched his 3000th hit here. Another nod to Japanese big leaguers goes to Hideo Nomo. Despite the park’s overwhelming hitter-friendly rep, the Dodger pitcher threw a no-hitter here in 1996…before fence realignments and humidor use…to date, the only no-hitter in the park’s history.

Scoreboard, Coors Field (18 August 2025)

Like most modern scoreboards, this one is ginormous and packed with information. Curiously, my slow-motion collecting of ballparks has often included Shohei Ohtani. When I visited Angels Stadium in 2022, he homered for the home team. When I saw a Tiger game at Comerica Park in 2023, he pitched a shutout for the Angels. Last year’s game in the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium, Ohtani, now a Dodger, homered again against the A’s. You’d think I was some kind of ‘Swiftie’-inspired fanboy. Just a coincidence.

Celebration, Coors Field (18 August 2025)

Not sure what to make of the team’s mascot…a purple pot-bellied triceratops. It turns out that ‘Dinger’ (cool slang name for a home run) dates to the construction of the stadium when dinosaur fossils were found in the excavation.

Thanks to Larry and Kate for making this night happen.