September 14 – Cruising the Soane River

Today we opted to not take the shore excursion.  This morning we had a presentation on the painting and printing of silk.  The demonstration was from a company that continues to do much of their work by hand instead of mass production. 

The ship cruised up the Soane River to Villefranche-dur-Soane where buses met the boat for those going on the shore excursion.  The excursion is a visit to another hilltop village, but the bigger part of the excursion was wine tasting.  And since we don’t drink wine we decided to have a relaxing day aboard ship.  Well, it wasn’t too relaxing as we worked on photos and travel stuff but still, we enjoyed cruising. 

After the excursion folks off-loaded the boat immediately turned around and we headed back down the Soane River for Lyon.  The Soane is narrower than the Rhone so we are closer to the shore and can see more. 

There were some very interesting buildings on the Soane banks of Lyon.

We arrived in Lyon and the folks on the shore excursion arrived very shortly after.