There is something very appealing – and very romantic – about the idea of spending a week sailing the winding River Seine in the City of Lights on a 150-person boat with large windows that open, seemingly within a stone’s throw of the land line. Set that pristine vessel towards the Normandy countryside and pass points like Monet’s gardens, quaint French villages frozen in time, and sites of historical conquests pre-dating the birth of the United States – and you have something resembling nirvana.

Even in the rain. The cobblestones of Paris shine when they’re wet. And with that special travel companion, someone who has known me for as long as I can remember and loves me unconditionally, the trip indeed takes on special meaning especially since that companion was my mother.

I don’t know exactly how we ended up in Paris on a Viking Riverboat Cruise but I imagine it had something to do with the ad they show at the beginning of each Downton Abbey episode. Mom needed a travel companion and somehow I got elected, or volunteered, not thinking it would actually come to fruition.

Not only is it the first time Mom and I are traveling together, it is the first time we are both, technically, single. Who will get hit on first? Maybe we will find an elderly professorial gentleman traveling with his divorced, international journalist son who speaks four languages…

I had to remember – this trip is a gift she has given me. I am essentially on a tour of duty in France and my “duty” is to make sure one passenger has a good time since she spent so much of her time making sure I had a good life.

What will I look back on when I think of my trip to Paris and Normandy? Not the locks, not the Impressionist painters, not the food – hopefully I will lose all memory (and fat!) from the food - but the smile on my mother’s face when she saw the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower. And the tears on that same face when I gave her a gift to thank her for the trip: a music box that played La Vin Rose as a scene from Monet’s garden gently spins - the Japanese bridge and water lilies in glorious golden and crimson splendor, sun-dappled and breezy, just as we both remember it.