Thoughts on "Floating Island" by Emily Kimbrough (Intro)

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Thoughts on “Floating Island” by Emily Kimbrough

 

INTRODUCTION TO THE BLOG POST

 

Jacqui and I had the pleasure recently to work with eight friends who asked us to help them plan a canal barge cruise in Burgundy France. While river cruising is a hot commodity today, and is even hotter as the world emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, canal barge cruising has a much lower profile and has a much lower awareness among the vacationing public.

 

One of the members of the octet; the one who first introduced the idea of such a voyage to his friends- and to us- came across this 1968 book about the very first vacationing canal barge in France, the Palinurus, and the author’s vacation with 10 of her friends.

 

Suffice to say that the author, Emily Kimbrough, was born in the late 19^th century and wrote books about her life experiences. She would have been a prolific blogger if she was living today. One of Ms. Kimbrough’s professional outputs was the 1957 “The Eve Arden Show” which aired for one season. If you have any memory of that show I think it gives you a sense for the tone and style of Ms. Kimbrough; a bit 19^th century prude and 20th century intellectual high-brow with a devilishly wicked sense of humor.

 

And so, a book about a little known mode of vacation, filled with the characters from the upper crust of Manhattan elites and the well-to-do suburbs of the mid-west, allows us a window into the means and methods how travel for pleasure has changed in the last 60 years.

 

As a reviewer on Amazon wrote;

“An entertaining description of eleven old friends who charter a barge to float down the Seine. The narrative is full of mishaps and misadventures that are made all the funnier by their truthfulness. Absolutely a treasure!”

 

 

This blog post is not a review of the book, if anything it is an appreciation for the first-person narrative of her experience, how it reads to a 21^st century traveler and the lessons that have been learned by both the travel industry and the world traveler having been besieged and transformed by technology, globalism and cultural shifts.

 

Here is the link to the Amazon page for the book and it’s reviews.

https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Island-Illustrated-Vasiliu-Kimbrough/dp/B002XHT88I

 

POST ONE

 

Cables. One can’t even begin to think about coordinating a trip for 11 people to leave the states and end up in France at the right time and place without email, texts and pdf’s. Cables. They were sending cables back and forth across the Atlantic!

 

Offices closed at 5:00pm and once the recipient of a cable was out of the office there was no way to get the information to him or her.

 

The travelers arrived at Orly on 707’s and had to make their way to a meeting place to join everyone else. Imagine if we surrendered our iPhones and tried to do that today?

 

Clothing. Lots of attention to dressing “properly”, especially the women. Today’s focus on casual chic was not in vogue and the lady travelers just about agonized about wearing pants on board the Palinurus.

 

Don’t forget flash bulbs!