Hal Jespersen’s European Barge Trip, May 2026 [Part 4]

These are my (Hal’s) notes on my trip from Amsterdam to Paris on the luxury canal barge Aurora, arranged through the Hotels Afloat agency. Nancy and I were originally scheduled to take this trip together, but she decided to send me alone while she dealt with some lingering health issues at home. My companions are our long-time travel friends from Cincinnati, Ray and Pat.

Since this is a lengthy report with lots of photos (iPhone 17 Pro Max), I have broken it into four parts:

Saturday, May 23 — Bougival to Paris

Another glorious day, though it promises to get unseasonably hot. Rather than pushing off immediately, we drove to the nearby Château de Malmaison, a few miles west of Paris in Rueil-Malmaison.

Joséphine bought the then-run-down 17th-century manor house in 1799—reportedly without telling her husband—while Napoleon was away on the Egyptian Campaign. He approved the purchase on his return, and the couple transformed it into an elegant villa in the Consular style. From 1800 to 1802 Malmaison served, alongside the Tuileries, as the effective seat of French government, hosting ministerial meetings, receptions, and diplomatic gatherings. After their divorce in 1809 Napoleon ceded the property to Joséphine outright, and she lived there until her death in May 1814. Napoleon, having escaped from Elba, stopped at Malmaison briefly in 1815 before his final exile to Saint Helena—his last days on French soil. The estate passed through several hands before being donated to the state in the late 19th century; a Napoleonic museum opened on the site in 1905.

We arrived amid a scrum of four busloads of Viking river cruise tour groups. Most of the interior rooms and their furnishings—Empire-style appointments, Joséphine’s personal effects, court costume displays—were of limited manly interest to me. The sculptures and martial portraits, however, were more in my wheelhouse.

A striking object was the “colossal” marble bust by Antonio Canova, labeled as derived from his full-length statue Napoléon en Mars pacificateur (Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, 1802–1806). Canova had been summoned to Paris to portray the First Consul and spent four years on the heroic nude figure—more than three meters tall—which Napoleon ultimately rejected for its nudity. The bust at Malmaison is one of numerous marble replicas produced from Canova’s plaster models. The full-length statue itself was purchased by the British government after Waterloo and presented to Wellington.

A full-length portrait by François-Joseph Kinson showed General Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, identified as Capitaine-Général de Saint-Domingue (Captain-General of Saint-Domingue). Leclerc—Napoleon’s brother-in-law through his marriage to Pauline Bonaparte—was sent to Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) in 1802 to suppress the independence movement and restore French authority. He died of yellow fever there the same year, age 30. The portrait was commissioned posthumously by Pauline. Kinson shows him in full general’s uniform against a Saint-Domingue landscape, with a cavalry skirmish visible in the distance behind him.

The two Antoine-Jean Gros paintings were squarely military. Bonaparte Premier Consul (1802) is a full-length official portrait, of which Napoleon ordered replicas made for display across France and Europe; the original is at the Musée de la Légion d’honneur in Paris. The second, Portrait du Premier Consul distribuant un sabre d’honneur après la bataille de Marengo (Portrait of the First Consul Distributing an Honor Saber after the Battle of Marengo), depicts Bonaparte on horseback at a troop review two days after the June 1800 victory, distributing awards to the Consular Guard—a set piece of Napoleonic propaganda that proved popular enough to be reproduced later in Gobelins tapestry.

I slipped away from the tour-group congestion and spent some time in the gardens, which were quiet and pleasant. Back aboard, we cast off at noon and headed up the Seine toward Paris. We lunched al fresco again, today moules-frites. Sailing in nice weather lets me describe the experience on board—it’s like visiting the relaxing country home of generous friends, where all gustatory needs are satisfied with excellent home cooking and unlimited beverages.

The sail into the Paris outskirts was one of the most visually stimulating of the trip. Mixtures of forests, skyscrapers, bridges, some industry, commercial traffic, hundreds of tied-up barges in every imaginable shape and size, speedboats, kayaks, etc. I had no idea there was so much of a water culture here. We had a minor misadventure in a lock near the Bois de Boulogne when the gate stopped working and they had to summon a maintenance crew to fix it.

It took five and a half hours to reach the Eiffel Tower. It is amazing to see how many large tourist boats are plying the river, and they are completely packed like sardines with passengers. An immersive cave-shaped work of “art” dressed the oldest bridge in Paris, the Pont Neuf. The temporary project was executed by the artist JR, assisted by a former member of Daft Punk, Thomas Bangalter. We passed by Notre Dame, but the picture angle was not good, and I will go there Monday and get a photograph. At 6:30, we docked in the Canal St. Martin in the Arsenal district, next to the Bastille. We had to squeeze into a tiny lock to enter the canal. I read later that there are boat tours you can take on the canal that go through nine locks.

Sunday, May 24 — Paris Food Tour, Matisse Exhibition

Another beautiful hot day, and this morning marked the end of the Aurora trip. We had a farewell breakfast and said goodbye to our new friends Gary and Eve and the excellent crew. Traveling with Nancy was the original plan, and I had added three days in Paris because she hadn’t been here in a long time—but then she couldn’t make it. Changing my flight to return three days early wasn’t economically viable, so I reluctantly did the remainder of the visit solo.

André was willing to take me to my hotel earlier than the rest of the group, giving me a good start for a mid-morning food tour of Montmartre. We drove fifteen minutes to the Hôtel Molière, in the Palais-Royale district, a quiet area with a lot of modest restaurants. I left my bags and hopped on the Métro at the nearby Pyramides station. At the Abbesses station, I didn’t count, but it felt like there were a hundred steps up to the street. I used my Apple Wallet to buy a Navigo ticket, and it worked at the turnstile with NFC. Morning temperatures reached only 75°, but the humidity was already a killer. It eventually hit 87°.

Our Secret Food Tour guide was Gaspard, who walked us through the history of the district. Saint Denis was martyred here, and Montmartre later became associated with Impressionism, pop music, and the cabarets. The tour covered a lot of ground. At La Butte Fromagère we tasted sheep’s milk cheese, and Gaspard picked up a large order for later. At Boucherie Jacky Gaudin the focus was charcuterie and the importance of buying from small shops with direct farmer connections. Chocolat Illèné was a highly artisan operation run by two Korean ladies who won a “best chocolate in Paris” award in 2025; their chocolate with wasabi was notable, along with a macaron that traced its origin to Catherine de Medici. Le Petit Café de Montmartre bills itself as the smallest crêperie in Paris; I had the classic flavor—butter and sugar. À la Mère de Famille is a branch of the oldest chocolatier in Paris, founded in 1761, where we picked up chocolate éclairs. At Urban Bakery on Rue Lepic, Gaspard gave a lesson on buying baguettes—always ask for “traditional.”

Gaspard led us to a “secret” location—an empty shop—to sit and eat the accumulated food. On an excellent baguette we had jambon beurre paired with a Touraine Sauvignon Blanc. The cheese and charcuterie spread included Sainte-Maure de Touraine (a very delicate goat cheese), saucisson à l’ail (garlic sausage), Comté (a semi-hard, raw cow’s milk cheese from the Jura Mountains—salty, and Gaspard’s nomination for favorite French cheese), Morbier (a semi-soft cheese also from the Jura Mountains), Rosette de Lyon (a garlicky saucisson sec), Fourme d’Ambert (a milder blue cheese served with a berry jam), pâté de campagne, and goose rillettes—the meat seasoned, submerged in fat, and slow-cooked for four to ten hours. The red wine was Château Frédignac’s “Le Canon de la Goulue,” a modest Bordeaux. To finish: Brie from Meaux layered with black truffles, and an éclair with chocolate custard filling.

I considered doing the touristy circuit up to Sacré-Cœur but the heat was too oppressive. Instead I took the Métro to the Tuileries, where Ray and Pat had camped out in a shady spot. We had tickets to a Matisse exposition at the Grand Palais and a couple of hours to relax.

The exposition was logistically disappointing. They totally oversold tickets and the crowds were as suffocating as the heat. Despite having a timed entry ticket, we waited in line almost a half hour, half of it in direct sun, before we saw the first painting. Some paintings had twenty people crowded around, although fortunately I am tall enough to still get a reasonable view. The selection of Matisse works was limited to his later period, 1941 to 1954, but the selection was rich and colorful. There were a number of black-and-white sketches, primarily portraits, but I was drawn to the explosion of colors and shapes in many of the works. The pieces that stood out for me were: Jeune fille en robe rose dans un intérieur (Young Girl in a Pink Dress in an Interior, 1942); Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (Two Young Girls in a Red and Yellow Interior, 1947); Intérieur jaune et bleu (Interior in Yellow and Blue, 1946); Grand Intérieur rouge (Large Red Interior, 1948); Nuit de Noël (1952); Vitrail bleu pâle (Pale Blue Window, 1948–49); L’Escargot (The Snail, 1953), a collage; La Tristesse du roi (The Sorrow of the King, 1952), a monumental gouache cut-out that Matisse considered equal to all his best paintings and the first such work to enter French public collections during his lifetime; and one of the four iconic Blue Nudes (III) from 1952.

I actually bailed out of the bedlam pretty quickly and made my way by Métro back to my hotel, which is very nice indeed. Ray, Pat, and I had a light dinner at a modest brasserie nearby called Bistrot Richelieu. Très jolie!

Monday, May 25 — Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, Le Train Bleu

Today was slightly hotter than yesterday, though the morning remained tolerable in the shade. Today is Whit Monday, a public holiday in France. I booked a guided tour through Viator of the renovated Notre-Dame de Paris and also Sainte-Chapelle, so I walked about a mile and a half, mostly along the Rue de Rivoli, then crossed over to the Île Saint-Louis to meet the group in a small park at the western tip of the island.

Our knowledgeable guide, Jasmina, was Montenegrin. We crossed the bridge to the Île de la Cité and she introduced the cathedral’s history before we entered. Notre-Dame holds the distinction of being the first building in the world to use flying buttresses, which became necessary to prevent the building from collapsing. Construction began in 1163 and continued for roughly 180 years, involving multiple architects and successive phases of building that gradually transformed the structure into the Gothic masterpiece it became. The spire rises directly above the altar. The rear choir section is still being repaired, with two buttresses currently covered over and lots of scaffolding.

I was surprised to realize that the great fire of 2019 had affected primarily the roof and the spire, both of which were already in the midst of renovation work, and that the lower half of the church required relatively little repair. The construction walls on the exterior are lined with detailed architectural diagrams documenting the ongoing restoration. No proven theory exists for the source of the fire; Jasmina suspects it was electrical.

We admired the gargoyles that date from 1240. We had 45 minutes inside the cathedral without our guide. The crowd today was massive—shoulder to shoulder throughout, with some eight million visitors recorded in the past six months alone. All the stained-glass windows appear authentic rather than replaced with modern artwork. As with many cathedrals, international chapels line the sides of the nave. The Holy Crown of Thorns was not on display today. Our guide described the cathedral’s three internal levels as corresponding to what she called the Holy Trinity: the lower level representing the earthly realm, the middle level the human realm, and the upper level the divine—each progressively lighter and more open as the eye moves upward. A highlighted statue of Mary and Jesus was unscathed by the falling debris from the burning roof.

Outside again, Jasmina covered the island’s history from the time of the Gallic Wars through Clovis (Louis I) and the Franks and the Viking raids of the 9th century. A church dedicated to Saint-Étienne preceded Notre-Dame on the same site and was roughly one ninth the size. Through five subsequent renovations, no modifications were made to the original Gothic style. She walked us through the three great portals in detail. The 28 large statues along the façade represent the family tree of Jesus beginning with David; their heads were removed during the Revolution and are now held at the Musée de Cluny. Notre-Dame was not considered the most significant cathedral in France—that distinction belonging to Reims—until Victor Hugo’s novel brought it to wider fame. Nearby stands the Hôtel-Dieu, the world’s oldest hospital still in operation. She also touched on Sainte-Chapelle, built by Saint Louis IX to house the Crown of Thorns, which remained there until 1920, and the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before her execution.

The second part of the Viator tour was a reserved entrance and self-guided visit to Sainte-Chapelle, a royal chapel in the Gothic style set within the medieval Palais de la Cité, which served as the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century. Construction began sometime after 1238 and the chapel was consecrated ten years later. The 15 soaring windows on the upper level, each 15 meters high, contain over 1,100 individual scenes depicting stories from the Old and New Testaments.

I took a Métro over to the Gare de Lyon and met Ray and Pat for a farewell luncheon at Le Train Bleu. It is a beautiful restaurant decorated in the neo-baroque and Belle Époque style of the 1900s. Lamentably, the quality of the decor is not matched by the general appearance of the clientele, including us. I had the specialty of the restaurant, which was Gigot d’Agneau (leg of lamb) carved to order tableside from a silver trolley. The food was excellent, and the entire experience was a fun, elegant two-hour lunch. We said our goodbyes and I regret that we will not be traveling with our friends for probably another year. They are continuing on a much longer set of adventures around France.

I originally intended to visit a museum this afternoon, but we did not finish with the lunch until after 3:00, so I decided to just return to the hotel and relax until dinner time. Since Aurora did not sail with a pizza oven, I had been missing my weekly pie fix. Tonight I satisfied that need at a place called Iovine’s, which had pretty decent Neapolitan-adjacent pizza.

Tuesday, May 26 — Carnavalet Museum, World War II Resistance Tour

I took the Métro to the Carnavalet Museum (Musée Carnavalet) in the Marais district, which has free admission to its permanent exhibition. The collection occupies two connected mansions and offers excellent trilingual signage—English, French, and Spanish. (No Axis languages, s’il vous plaît.) I spent two and a half hours there but could easily have stayed five. The museum traces the full history of Paris from its earliest settlements to the twentieth century. [Baron Haussmann oversaw the sweeping mid-19th-century transformation of Paris under Napoleon III, replacing medieval streets with the broad boulevards, unified building façades, parks, and modern sewers that define the city’s appearance today. The Carnavalet itself was one of the mansions that survived this transformation, and the museum that bears its name opened in 1880.]

The early history galleries are anchored by a highly detailed model of the Île de la Cité as it appeared in the 19th century, alongside an interactive map of Roman Lutetia and a reconstruction by Jean-Claude Golvin depicting the city in the 2nd century. The Parisii tribe, the Saint-Marcel necropolis, and Sainte Geneviève—the city’s patron saint, whose intervention in 451 is credited with turning back Attila’s Huns—all receive attention. Medieval Paris is represented by Braun’s map of circa 1572, which depicts the city as it appeared around 1530, and interactive versions of the same map appear elsewhere in the museum. A 3D polychrome wood carving from the 17th century depicting the martyrdom of Saints Denis, Rustique, and Éleuthère on the hill of Montmartre was among the more striking individual objects.

The introductory gallery features a massive ornamental door from the town hall with a Medusa’s head, a large-scale model of the museum complex, a bateau-mouche model from 1895, and a small exhibit marking 250 years of Franco-American friendship. An allegorical painting of the City of Paris by Louise Abbéma hangs nearby. The 18th-century galleries touch on France’s international influence, including a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

The French Revolution receives extensive treatment, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, materials on the Estates-General, a portrait of Louis XVI, an iron oven model of the Bastille, and a painting of Marie-Antoinette leaving the Conciergerie for her execution. The Fête de la Fédération of July 14, 1790, the proclamation of the republic in September 1792, and the imprisonment of the king in the Temple Tower are all covered. I was surprised that the guillotine was absent and the Terror received only passing mention.

Napoleon is represented by a bust and by a portrait in his uniform as Colonel of the Chasseurs de la Garde, the cavalry regiment of the Imperial Guard, painted by Robert Lefèvre. The galleries that follow move through his improvements to the city, the July Revolution, the arrival of the future King Louis-Philippe at the Paris town hall welcomed by Lafayette, the Revolution of 1848, the Haussmann era under Napoleon III, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the siege of the same year. The Belle Époque section includes a reconstructed Proust salon and the partially reassembled jewelry shop Fouquet, once located at 6 rue Royale. A collection of historical Parisian shop signs was another highlight. The two world wars receive comparatively little space, though a Liberation poster with a proud rooster stood out.

Between engagements I took the Métro to Café de la Comédie, a tourist café near the Louvre. Expensive lunch, but decent, with good people-watching. Beaucoup de belles jeunes femmes.

I met Chris Pollard at Place Colette for the World War II resistance tour I had arranged through Viator. The other party canceled at the last minute, and British ex-pat Chris made the trip in from the suburbs to give me the tour individually. With a one-on-one format I had limited opportunity to take notes without being awkward, so what follows is somewhat sketchy. The very hot weather continued through the 3.5-hour tour and taxed my hydration.

Chris opened at the Hôtel du Louvre, which served as the first Gestapo headquarters in Paris. The Germans occupied roughly 400 hotels across the city. There was active rivalry between the Gestapo and the GFP (Geheime Feldpolizei, the Secret Field Police). Because the Germans never had nearly enough men, they depended on French police cooperation. The police helped deport recent Jewish immigrants but largely shielded French-born Jews. The Gestapo’s first target was the approximately 30,000 Germans who had fled the Nazi regime to France. Both the police and the Gestapo cooperated in rounding up communists. Chris also gave a thorough history of the castles, palaces, and museums of the Louvre complex, leading into an account of how the artworks were secretly evacuated after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and how they were subsequently recovered. One detail I found striking: all of the stained glass was removed from Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle before the occupation.

Chris covered the formation of the Vichy government and instances in which Vichy officials provided covert cooperation with the Allies. The final stop was the Hôtel Meurice, the top German headquarters in Paris. Chris walked through the decisions that averted open conflict as Patton’s army approached the city, and offered a detailed challenge to the portrayal of Dietrich von Choltitz in the book and film Is Paris Burning? Resistance activity in the city had been limited for two reasons: the multiple factions, including the communists, argued constantly among themselves, and the Allies had originally intended to bypass Paris and so had not smuggled in many weapons.

So as you can see, there were not very many visual opportunities on this tour, but I enjoyed myself bantering with Chris. I took an Uber to a Charles de Gaulle airport hotel, the Radisson Blu (née Pullman), an old favorite, to prepare for an early morning flight home Wednesday. Pro travel tip: avoid this trip during rush hour.

Wednesday, May 27 — Flying Home

Because of the new European Entry/Exit System, travelers have been warned to get to the airport three or four hours before a flight. This morning I got there three hours and 15 minutes ahead and found that the United check-in desk was not yet open. Once I finally got checked in, the delay through immigration and security was only about 15 minutes. I retired to the Star Alliance lounge for a late breakfast. I had a comfortable direct flight to SFO that started with an interesting episode. As we were boarding the bus to go to the aircraft, a gate agent rushed out and told me that my tray table was not operable and awarded me 12,500 miles for my trouble. On the plane, the flight attendant took pity on me and moved me to the seat where the captain normally rests, 1A, so that was a perfect outcome. As we arrived after 11 hours, I took some photos in the beautiful weather over San Francisco Bay. Immigration delay at SFO was 4 minutes!

Despite some unseasonable weather, I had an excellent time on my trip. Ray and Pat are great travel companions, although I did feel Nancy’s absence as a heavy counterweight. She’s doing much better, and we are hopeful that our next trip, a 50th anniversary African safari this summer, will go ahead without incident.