October 24, 2024 - Tournon, France
This morning was our opportunity to go rogue and do something not offered by Viking. Our ship the Buri was docked briefly this morning in Tournon, France, the town that is twinned with the city of Tain L’Hermitage directly across the river from where we are docking.
When I found out last evening that the point of our stop in Tournon was only to drop off everyone so they could go on their excursions which were either: a ride on the Steam Train or Hiking up into the vineyards in Tain L’Hermitage, I knew that I didn’t want to do either of those activities. You see the last time we were in Tournon, we did the hike in the Chapoutier vineyards in Tain and we also hiked vineyards in Tournon. We had a full day docked in Tournon, when we were on the Uniworld river cruise, so after lunch we walked on our own to the Valhrona chocolate factory and taste tasted their wall of chocolate, coming out with a year’s supply of chocolate!
What I never knew the last time we were here in this beautiful wine country was that Valhrona was a top 10 chocolatier in the world. I had frankly never heard of Valhrona before we were here last time, because it was not a brand that I had seen in Canada or the U.S. at any speciality grocery store, but once we had visited, I started to see Valhrona chocolate whereever we were travelling.
I am a chocoholic. I admit it. I love my dark chocolate and I love to have 2 small pieces of good dark chocolate after dinner every night. I would frankly rather have some chocolate than eat most desserts! I still remember the excellent Jungle Gold vegan chocolate that we bought in Bali, Indonesia when we were visiting there on the Viking World Cruise. The chocolate was so good and different, being vegan, and I stocked up on chocolate from the factory and paced myself eating it so it lasted for the rest of the World Cruise.
So knowing that we would once again be visiting Valhrona this morning, I was pretty excited! We had promised Daniela our Program Director that we would be back to the bus stop (where our ship was briefly docked) by 11:30am to grab the bus with the people who had been hiking in the vineyards.
The vineyards which 9 people from the Buri were going to go and hike in Tain L’Hermitage
Bridge from Tournon to Tain L’Hermitage
Our Aussie friends Vange and Rob joined us this morning as we set off over the bridge from Tournon to Tain L’Hermitage for our 25 minute walk to the Valhrona chocolate factory.
The chocolate factory was opening at 9am so we disembarked the Buri at 8:35am and started walking. It was a bit chillier than other mornings we have had onboard, but with some layers on, it was very comfortable for a brisk walk. Vange and Rob are in super shape and try and get a lot of steps in daily, so we were keeping up a good pace walking to Valhrona.
We arrived at the Valhrona chocolate factory and asked if they had any hot chocolate? They quickly whipped us up 4 small glassses of hot chocolate and oh my goodness was it ever delicious! The wall of chocolate to taste test was gone though. I guess with Covid they no longer wanted people having access to touch the samples even with tongs.
The showroom at Valhrona is so big that it was difficult to decide what to purchase to bring home with us. Given how close to Christmas it is, Valhrona even had their Christmas packaging on display for many of their products. Oh my! Decisions! Decisions!
Knowing how good this chocolate is and how difficult it is to find back home, I wanted to make sure I would not only buy eating chocolate, but baking chocolate too! Many of the best chefs in the world use Valhrona to bake their rich, delicious chocolately desserts, so this was my opportunity to stock up!
Valhrona was founded in 1922 by Monsieur Guironnet an enterprising French pastry chef from the Rhone Valley who opened La Chocolaterie du Vivarais, his first chocolate factory. In 1939 Messieurs Bourget and Gonnet bought the chocolate factory on his death and renamed it. The trademark of ‘Valhrona’ was first adopted in the 1960’s and the company was eventually bought by a family owned French group in 1984.
Valhrona has 5 subsidiaries and 60 local distributors across the globe. The company also maintains the ‘Ecole du Grand Chocolate’ a school for professional chefs with a focus on chocolate based dishes and pastries.
Valhrona has been working to seek out and identify the select best varieties of cocoa trees in all regions of the world through building direct partnerships with planters in carefully selected cocoa producing countries and creating new plantations where they grow rare specifies of cocoa beans. Since Valhrona works directly with the producers instead of wholesale markets and dealers, they ensure the quality and maintain checks on the growing conditions and methods of harvesting, fermenting and drying the cocoa beans. Once the beans are dried they are only stored on the plantation for a short time. The beans are examined before shipment and properly packed into ventilated containers. Once they arrive at the Valhrona factory the cocoa beans go through a painstaking inspection to detect: off odours which would lead to off flavours; check for the presence of foreign bodies; verify the moisture content; ensure all of Valhronas specifications have been met. The beans are kept in jute sacks which are probed with a sampling iron to extract enough beans for a triple qualitative analysis. A certain number of beans are cut test in search of mould, insect damage, evidence of germination or excessive flatness. A percentage of whole beans are roasted and smelled and a small quantity of these beans are made up as a chocolate tasting sample for Valhrona’s in house experts or “CACAOTHEQUE” who judges each single origin specimen for both flavour and conformity to the standard expected from the cocoa of the designated source. If the beans are accepted by Valhrona then the cocoa beans are held under clean, dry insect free conditions at a temperature of 16C and classified by flavour.
Wow! What a process! I had no idea that Valhrona did all this in selecting which cocoa beans to use to make into their chocolate. No wonder they are a top 10 chocolatier in the world!
A happy chocoholic!
I bought quite a lot of chocolate at Valhrona and as a result, the check out girl also threw in a few ‘free’ samples for me to try! The bag was quite heavy and full of chocolate to carry back to Tournon, but I’m so happy we were able to spend some time this morning visiting the Valhrona chocolate factory. We did not do the tour of the factory as it was not open, but wandering around the chocolate showroom was good enough for us!
We walked back over the bridge to Tournon and were now looking for a washroom. Of course we couldn’t find a washroom anywhere so Richard did his usual for us and went to a cafe and ordered a double espresso so that we could use the toilet in the cafe. Thank god Richard loves coffee!
We wandered around Tournon and found a small pedestrian shopping street and a nice ladies clothing and purse store. Vange found a top and a purse she liked so she got them and I found a cute long sleeved top as well. We keep thinking the weather will turn and get colder and we will need our long sleeve base layers, but so far we have had wonderful weather on this cruise in late October!
Tournon by the Rhone river. I love the tree canopies in France!
Waiting for the bus in Tournon
The vineyard hikers arrived back to the parking lot where the Viking Buri had been docked and shortly thereafter the bus arrived, which we all got on to go to where the Buri had been moved to; which was a short 30 minute scenic drive through vineyards on the sides of hills and groves of fruit trees, following the Rhone river to our right as we drove. The region except for the hills very much reminded us of the Niagara peninsula where we live which is also full of vineyards and fruit trees.
Andance, where the Viking Buri was waiting for us when we got off the bus from Tournon
Viking Buri waiting for us in Andance, France
When we arrived back at the Buri in Andance, all of the buses from the Steam Train excursion were also arriving at the same time so we lined up to get back on board, tapping our key card to let the staff know that we had made it back with the bus to the ship. Even though we had tapped back onto the ship, when we did get to our cabin one of the staff from Guest Services called our cabin to make sure we had gotten back to the ship, since we had ‘gone rogue’ and done our own thing by going to visit Valhrona. Thank goodness Richard is in the Trip Directing business with a speciality in transportation to be able to figure out how to do this kind of self guided touring stuff, but still working within the confines of Viking’s tours.
Mediterranean bowl with hummus and falafel for lunch
We sailed away for our next town as soon as everyone was back onboard and went to the dining room to have some lunch.
Selfies on the balcony of the Viking Buri while Richard napped
Look how close we are to the walls of the locks!
I was not reaching for the wall. It was that close as I extended out my arm
I was blogging on the balcony while we sailed towards our next port and all of a sudden it got very dark and cool on the deck. I noticed that we had entered a lock. We were very, very close to the side of the lock so I took a few videos and photos to show you how close these river cruise ships get to the sides of the lock, when we are passing through them.
As we came through the lock we were almost immediately in the town of Vienne, France. We had never stopped in Vienne before so I was really looking forward to exploring a new town on the Rhone.
A beautiful swan to greet us in Vienne
As we docked a beautiful swan headed down the ship looking for handouts!
The town of Vienne, France.
We were going to have a walking tour of Vienne at 4:45pm, or shortly after we docked for about 1.5 hours today.. Our Aussie friends were all going on the ‘active’ tour so I swopped out our group 1E tickets for 1A, which was the active walking tour. Apparently we were going to climb up to the highest point you can see (left of the photo above) to get the best views of Vienne and the Rhone.
Vienne is a town 35 km south of Lyon located at the confluence of the Gere and the Rhone river. Vienne was a major centre of the Roman Empire under the Latin name ‘Vienna’. It was transformed into a Roman colony in 47 BC under Julius Caesar and become a major urban centre on the Rhone. As a Roman provincial capital, remains of Roman construction are widespread across modern Vienne. Every summer a major Jazz festival is also held in Vienne.
Our Guide met us on the pier and we started walking across the bridge where the Buri was docked, into Vienne.
Our first stop was at the Vienne Cathedral dedicated to Saint Maurice. Erected from 1130 onwards the late Romanesque style church also had modifications and extensions to the church which were done in the Baroque style. It was very interesting when the guide pointed out the different styles inside the cathedral.
If you look at the top of the archway, it was constructed in the late Romanesque style
Look closely at the far right and the left arches. The right side is late Romanesque and the left side is done in the Baroque architectural style. The cathedral was extended and made larger and instead of following the original Romanesque style of architecture, the new construction was done in the Baroque style. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a contrast in architectural styles side by side before in a cathedral so this was quite an interesting observation.
Many of the Roman Catholic statues had their heads knocked off by the plundering, Protestant Huguenot forces in 1562 and so they remain headless to this day!
The Roman column in the cathedral was ‘borrowed’ from the Roman ruins in Vienne in the 12th century when the cathedral was being constructed. Rather than figure out how to support the doorframe, they just went and raided some local Roman ruins and slapped it into place.. The column was not from the Romanesque period when the church was originally constructed. How interesting!
This exit from the Cathedral is another example of where local Roman ruins in Vienne were plundered to decorate the archway of the church. The columns were Roman and so was the straight line carving over the door frame. The images in the carvings are in no way shape or form religious, but rather were ‘borrowed’ from some local Roman ruins.
How very interesting this tour was, when the guide pointed things out to us that we wouldn’t have been able to see on our own!
We walked a few blocks through some nice shopping streets in Vienne and then right in front of us stood a Roman Temple!
The ‘Temple of Augustus and Livia’ in Vienne, France. Built in the 1st century this temple has suffered a fire and a slight earthquake which caused some damage to the temple. Until the French Revolution the temple became the parish church and then eventually became a museum and now is a historical monument and cannot be entered.
Our guide Maxine holding up a photo of what the Temple originally looked like
It is hard to believe that a 1st century Roman temple is in a place like Vienne, France!
Our group then proceeded to walk up a very steep hill and because we were the active group, we were the only Viking walking tour group that would make it to the top of the hill. Richard was not feeling well, so I left him on the ship as I hoofed it and I mean really hoofed it up to the very top of the hill to catch the view over the town of Vienne. That was probably the most severe hill I have hiked up on this vacation! Considering I broke my femur in 2020, I was proud of the fact I was the 3rd person up the hill after Vange and Rob!
Theatre Antique de Vienne.
Directly below us while we were standing on Pipet Hill’s steep slopes, we could see directly below us was the Roman Theatre’s 13,000 seat Theatre. This was one of the largest spectator theatres in the Roman Empire. Built in 40-50 AD the layout was in keeping with the Latin stone theatre model. The theatre was not just used for plays, dramas, musicals dances, sporting or battles but was also used for civic and official gatherings. In 1834 a local archaeologist and museum curator managed to convince the inspector general of Historical monuments that the relics at the foot of Pipet’s Hill could be those of a Roman theatre and and not just an Amphiteatre. Ecavations began between 1908-1938 and this theatre was unearthed after it had been buried in thousands of feet of earth. The restoration of the theatre has led to the theatre being a major centre for the local jazz festival which began in 1981. Miles Davis was the first artist to play at the theatre in Vienne and Diana Krall has also held a concert at this venue.
Views up the Rhone and over the town of Vienne.
The Viking Buri is sitting at about 11 o’clock in this photo if you look towards the Rhone River. That sure was a big hike!
Not only was the Roman theatre very interesting to see, but the views from the top of Pipet Hill were amazing looking down over the town of Vienne and seeing our ship floating on the winding Rhone river below!
As we started our descent down the very steep Pipet Hill, a slight drizzle started and we had to watch ourselves to make sure we didn’t slip on the hill coming down
As we headed back to the Viking Buri, the sun was trying to break through the clouds and we made it back to the ship in time for dinner.
The Buri was docked overnight in Vienne and we were told our back on board time was 5am tomorrow morning!
Richard has come down with a cold so he did not make it to dinner unfortunately. I was able to have the staff deliver him some quiche and soup for a light dinner in the cabin. It seems like these ships become floating Petri dishes with everyone coughing and hacking and spreading germs, so hopefully Richard feels better soon and it doesn’t linger for long.
I learned quite a few things today visiting not only Valhrona in Tain L’Hermitage, but also going to the ancient Roman town of Vienne, France. What an interesting day! Even though we had been to Valhrona before I never really appreciated the quality of the chocolate produced by this top 10 in the world chocolatier. The experience in Vienne was so unusual as well as fresh and new as we had never visited Vienne when on the Uniworld river cruise. I’m sorry Richard missed the tour of Vienne, but the good thing is he also reads the blog so he can catch up on what he missed today through reading the blog and seeing the photos of Vienne.
We are sailing to Lyon where we will be docked for a few days before we depart for our next leg of this cruise, which will be on the Rhine river. The time always passes so quickly as we start sailing and visiting interesting towns and villages, but we are very much enjoying this trip with our new Aussie friends to share our experiences with!
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