Practice for retirement should include a river cruise.  It’s as close to what I can imagine retirement community life would be like.  Got gray hair, dyed hair, or no hair?  Well my friend, welcome to travel at the slowest possible pace.  Mix that with the physically and mentally challenged, and it can be like running in molasses.

I’m actually enjoying the snail’s pace, especially since I have a tendency to push forward without smelling the roses.  However, I just might be in an alcohol-induced coma!  Just like a luxury retirement community,  one  has many choices aboard including guided tours, painting classes, lectures, group dining, and theme buffets.  A piano player entertains during the cocktail hour.  They’ll even bring in accordion music to get you really fired up!

We traveled today by bus to Monet’s Garden.  With a river cruise you’re always close to shore and alternative transportation.  You also have the convenience of not switching hotel rooms every night, plus great food and an abundance of spirits.  Even molasses for your crepes and to slow your speech.

I haven’t had a lot of “my time,” so there are many words stuck in my head.  I’ll sneak away from the group activities on occasion and get them out of my head and on to a page.  I certainly don’t associate my writing with greatness, but I’m sure that the French artists worked in a similar manner.  They’d get a picture in their mind and become obsessed with getting it on canvas before it dissolved from their memory.  They create masterpieces, while I vomit words!

With any form of art, it’s not necessarily created for fame and fortune.  It’s simply something that you imagine in your mind and hope you can share it with others.  Many artists, unfortunately, do not achieve notoriety until long after death.  Claude Monet was obsessive, continuously perfecting varieties of a similar vision on canvas.  He at least enjoyed a degree of wealth from his passion.  Sadly, many artists never do!

There were no drunken squabbles over dinner last night, as incorrectly predicted.  Just a very pleasant sunset, as viewed through my wine goggles.  The boat is safely docked in Rouen for the next few nights, with a variety of guided tours available tomorrow.  These include the nearby chapels that Monet obsessively painted when he wasn’t in his garden, where we are today.  I might even check- out Joan de’ Arc’s bar.

Merci – I’m grateful to get these words out of my head!  I’m also glad I could share them with you on this once blank page.