Viviers, France

Viviers is a cute little village right along the Rhone River in France. It has less than 4,000 people in it, and it obviously has seen better days - which makes it an interesting place to stop on a cruise.

There is a good-sized Old Town in Viviers, and there are buildings with considerable charm as a result. But the population is so small that many of those buildings are suffering from neglect. It's not cheap to keep a 500-year-old structure intact, especially without tenants. It's difficult to keep the young people around, I would guess.

You can see a nuclear power plant from the lawn of the church up on a hill. The power company built a big dock along the riverfront that can handle river cruise ships. I'm not sure how many actually do stay here, but a market popped up in the middle of downtown during our brief stay.

Let's look around a little: