The popularity of cruises on the rivers of France and Europe is growing steadily with the wave of slow tourism. A way of traveling that reconciles freedom, concern for the environment and a different relationship with time.
Tag: river
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The Hidden World Of The Common Dragonfly
June is the best time to spot a dragonfly. Here’s why it’s worth looking for one common species.
The lack of government services in Port-de-Paix, Haiti, has spawned an ongoing crisis in the coastal city, where residents struggle to maintain their homes amid constant floods.
Plastic pollution has contaminated our oceans to the point where a new ecological niche of anthropic origin has been coined: the ‘plastisphere’. The bacteria that proliferate there could lead to the next health crisis.
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The Not-So-Zen Li River
There are things photographs capture well: the lush hills that flank the Li River, the fishermen on their frail-looking bamboo rafts, the strange rock formations you get to see along the way. But this moment remains in my memory for what you can’t see: my (mostly Chinese) fellow passengers on that cruise boat who seemed […]
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Life On The Amazon
You can travel the world for more than 60 years without being an aventurier, per se. Still, we got pretty close from the relative comfort of our Amazon cruise where we saw this passing moment of indigenous life in the Brazilian rainforest.
The Santa Cruz River, once the city’s lifeblood, has been bone-dry for the past 70 years. But if all goes according to plan, the ancient waterway could be back in action by as early as next year.
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Postcard From The Ganges
Oh, to watch the sun setting over the Ganges and the ghats of Varanasi …
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Floating By The Sugarloaves
Near Guilin, my wife and I hopped on a short cruise on the Li River. The makeshift houseboats built from discarded modern materials were interesting to look at, but clashed with the scenic surroundings of sugarloaf hills and gorges in southern China. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
CAIRO — With its densely populated coasts and low-lying agricultural areas, Egypt is one of the most vulnerable countries to rising sea levels. According to World Bank data, a one-meter rise in the sea level would inundate a quarter of the Nile Delta and force 10.5 million people from their homes. Rising sea waters would […]
For years Beijing has said it’s working to provide safe drinking water to people in the countryside, but experts say the goal is far from being realized.
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Whatever Floats Their Boat
Of all the boats I’ve ever seen, to me the bamboo rafts on the Li River seem the most hazardous.
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The Last Of The Log Drives?
By the end of the 1990s, it was decided that flowing rivers were not the best way to transport timber, and log drives were gradually abandoned in Canada — much to the dismay of local kids who had to bid adieu to their log rolling competitions. But in 1994 logging was still going on along […]
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Two Men In A Boat
In contrast with the imposing river that flows through Vienna and Budapest, the Danube Delta is sleepy and accessible. It was noon and the sun was high, so this Romanian fisherman decided it was as good a time as any to open a bottle — and who was I to disagree?
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Russian Temperature
Up until we went on a cruise on the Volga, the very name of the river brought images of iciness, Czars, snow, and tales of folklore. But on this hot summer day along “Russia’s main street,” as they call it, babushkas had given way to bikinis.
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Flowing Volga, Still Life
Ten years had passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when we took a river cruise on the Volga … but in some places, there was no way of telling. This church, which had been abandoned under the Communist regime, remained unrepaired. The landscape of open pasture and haystacks brought back childhood memories of […]
RABAT — At the mouth of the Bou Regreg River in Morocco, the small blue boats go from one shore to the other. The tireless rowers have assured the exchange of goods between Rabat and Salé, a commuter town on the other side of the river. “We wanted to preserve the boats, because they are […]
BEIJING – Last month, more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in tributaries of the Huangpu River, not far from Shanghai, in eastern China. At the same time, scores of diseased pig carcasses were also found miles away in Liuyang River, in the south-central Hunan Province. The massive number of dead pigs discovered nationwide caused […]
PARIS – The event was supposed to start on September 2 at 7 a.m. at the Josephine Baker swimming pool in Paris, on the banks of the Seine River. More than 3000 participants had signed up to take part in the swim that would take them up the Seine to the André-Citroën Park, west of […]