My husband and I had been on a cruise through Normandy to the English Channel (La Manche) and had planned to continue cruising down from Chalon sur Saone to Nice. We spent a night in Paris at the wonderful Hotel Scribe and were expecting to take the TGV down to Dijon, but the unions had decided to go out on strike so the TGV wasn't running. That meant driving down to the Saone to Macon, bypassing Chalon which we returned to later. Floods were hampering sailing under some of the bridges, so we weren't sure if Sapphire would get under the bridges at Lyon, where the Saone meets the Rhone. We spent time going back and forth on the Saone until the very clever captain Frank was able to get the Sapphire into Lyon by about 3cm clearance.bfrom there we were able to go to Chateauneuf du Pape, and Avignon, however we weren't able to dock in Tarascon at the end of the cruise and had to leave for Nice from Chateauneuf du Pape.

The ship took 167 guests, 40 more than the Scenic Gem which held 127. This meant that the Sapphire was tight, and the rooms were terribly cramped, with the shower more like a vertical coffin than the roomy shower on the Gem. We couldn't open the cupboard doors without one of us moving and this made the journey difficult.

Dang was excellent,although the special dinner available to everyone on board was the same menu as on the Gem. One would think that the company would be able to figure out that some guests had already eaten that menu (which we didn't like much anyway). Read more