Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Just Hanging Around

Dear Family and Friends

What an interesting few weeks! Aunt Jean and Uncle Owen got a very good sense of the joys and minor difficulties that are part of cruising. It was hard to leave Moret-sur-Loing – what a beautiful little village – but we wanted to take them to Auxerre if possible before they had to get back to Paris to fly home.

At Montereau-Fault-Yonne we left the Seine and joined the Yonne River which joins the Canal du Nivernais at Auxerre. Sens was a lovely city (despite the lack of promised water at the mooring) and surprising architecture. I had always associated half-timbered (Tudor) houses with England but they are predominant in France as well in towns and villages that would have been established in the same century.  There was a whole street of these buildings that have kept their character on the upper floors but now house shops on the bottom floor.

Beautiful “Tudor” buildings with shops below

 It was at Sens that we were able to introduce Jean and Owen to crepes. Actually it was galettes which are savoury crepes made from buckwheat. Crepes refer to the sweet dessert with ice cream or other toppings. Galettes have all kinds of fillings from salmon (fresh or smoked), eggs, cheese, beef or pork – name your preference. We were so full from lunch that we had a very Canadian supper – peanut butter and jam on baguettes!

The bonus in Sens was seeing the Canadian flag flying from a lovely big boat. Two Montrealers live full time on their boat in France and travel as their fancy takes them. They have a good size boat with all mod-coms including heat, air conditioning and washing machine!!

The Montrealers

Amazingly the very next day we met another Canadian family in Joigny who had rented a boat for 10 days. Typical Canadian family. The parents were from Scarborough, one son and wife from Winnipeg and one son from Vancouver. He left a day early to get home for a Canucks game –sadly in vain. From the past few years when we have seen only 3 Canadians, we now see them more frequently. Some are boat owners and some are renters. We are now in an area with more canals branching off the rivers - canals of Bourgogne, Nivernais, Loing, Briare, etc are attractive wine-growing areas to visit. In fact yesterday, in Brienon-sur-Armançon we met 2 Toronto couples (one of whom was elderly and handicapped) who arrived to cruise for the next 10 days (one way) along the Canal de Bourgogne. Phil and I were a little concerned as they have no experience with cruising and the wind is currently pretty wicked. Rental boats are light (not heavy steel) and get pushed around by the wind which can be hard to handle especially in the locks. We are unashamedly proud of how well we now handle the boat in all conditions! And of course we had 2 extra pair of hands to help with ropes!

Jean took a turn at the wheel
Enjoying the French countryside

Joigny was a great moorage (no promised showers of course!) and a great town. Built on a hillside, the layers of roofs remind us of Tuscan hilltop villages.
Joigny from the moorage

More half-timbered houses leaning into the alleys (or ruelles as they are called) and 3 wonderful churches. We marvelled that such a small town could support three churches one of which was pretty magisterial. We found a brasserie with a very funny landlord that where we had afternoon drinks and then lunch the next day. I ordered a local sausage that tasted very good until I looked down and saw what was obviously the tip of a nose – hairs and all. While I courageously controlled the urge to heave, I tucked the rest of it under a lettuce leaf so I wouldn’t have to look at it. I shudder just writing about it!

The carvings on this Joigny house were amazing
Lunch with Jean and Owen in Joigny
Our funny brasserie host (just kidding)

Sadly Joigny was also where we had to say good-bye to Jean and Owen as they caught the train back to Paris to fly home. We didn’t make it to Auxerre with them but maybe they’ll come back another year and visit it. In the meantime when we finally get there we’ll share photos of what they missed. We expect it to be a highlight of this year’s cruising from everything we seen and read.

That’s not to say that we haven’t had our adventures these past weeks. Soon after leaving Pont à Bar, Phil noticed that the light on the battery charger wasn’t lit. We weren’t too worried as we were pretty much moving every day which means the battery is charging as we cruise.  As mentioned in the last blog, Phil and Simon discovered that it was fried. Now what to do? We then phoned Simon Evans who owns the boatyard where Calypso will spend the winter and he will order us a new one. In the meantime we are just hanging around waiting until he tells us that it is time to go back to Migennes to have it installed.

We thought that as long as Migennes was at the entrance to the Canal de Bourgogne, we might as well venture down it. Plan A for 2011 had us going down the Bourgogne until we discovered it was 242 kms with 189 locks! No thanks – this is supposed to be fun not hard work! We met an Australian couple who came from the other end. They said it was fun at first but then it was a case of ‘when will it end?’ They also cautioned us about the low water mark and the resulting weed problem. Their prop and bow thrusters were so fouled, it took them an hour to go 200 metres! We should have listened!!
Entrance to the Canal de Bourgogne

Brienon-sur-Armançon was our first stop and we were moored alongside the bowling (petanque) pitch. It was fun watching them play. Like curling on steroids. Some of the players were very good.

Playing petanque (or boulles)

Then we headed for St Florentin. The quai was full so we had to reverse in at the end of the mooring area. Sadly, it was full of weeds. The prop and bow thrusters got so jammed with weeds that we actually had to be hauled in using ropes to position us. Not fun!!! But we did meet a lovely couple from Portland, Oregon who have a similar boat and have been doing this for 11 years. They have cruised most of France and were a fount of information. We decided that this was as far as we were willing to go on the Bourgogne so we decided to go back the way we came. As you can guess, getting out of the weeds was a horror story. The props wouldn’t respond and the bow thruster was jammed. After almost running ashore again, Phil managed to get us free and we were off. I’m sure it’s beautiful but we weren’t prepared to get into serious trouble by trying to go further.

See – I told you the water level is down (St Florentin)

So we headed back to Brienon, stayed a few days and now we are back in Joigny. Joigny not only is a pretty town but it has a McDonald’s for free wifi and a big supermarket across the street.  Our next stop is Auxerre where we will wait to hear from Simon that the battery charger has arrived. After that we might go part way down the Nivernais but we won’t get far as we’ll really only have three more weeks of cruising before we head to Paris for a week and them home. Wow, where has the time gone?

Love to all –Captain Skinny (as in he’s lost 25 pounds from worry) and the Not-So-Skinny First Mate

Friday, June 10, 2011

Paris and Moret-sur-Loing

Dear Family and Friends

It has been an interesting week to say the least! We left Nogent-sur-Marne on the 31st of May and joined the Seine River to make our way to Paris. The Seine is incredibly busy with peniches (barges) travelling at speeds much greater than we travel so we had to deal with the turbulence. It didn’t help that it was also quite windy so my mal de mer was acting up. Thank goodness we made it to the Arsenal marina when we did!

Calypso moored at the Arsenal
The Monument to the Bastille – built where it formerly stood

The Arsenal is in the 4th arrondissement - very convenient to all the major sites and the métro was on our doorsteps. We were in berth #95 so that gives you an idea of how big it is – over 100 boats at any given time. The neatest thing though is that there are boaters from everywhere – UK, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, The Channel Islands (Guernsey) and of course – drum roll please – Canada. As usual ours was the only Canadian flag to be seen! In the ‘it’s a small world ‘ sense, we met a couple from Guernsey who are friends of the brother of our Windy Poplars neighbours the Meinke’s. Awesome!

My Aunt Jean and Uncle Owen (my Mom’s brother) from near Toronto arrived on June 1st to cruise with us for a week. We stayed in Paris for a few days to give them a chance to recover from jet lag and sightsee. That’s when the trouble started. What we didn’t realize is that it was a week that included a national holiday (Ascension Thursday) and midterm break for both British and then European students. Everywhere we went there were unbelievable lineups so we have many, many pictures of the outside of tourist attractions but the only one we really went into was Sacré Coeur in Montmartre. We walked our little butts off the first day as I had forgotten how far it was from the Eiffel Tower to Musee d’Orsay. We walked 12 MILES that day – talk about pooped. Notre Dame was very close to the mooring so that was an easy visit, we took both the Batobus (water taxi) and the métro to others.

Montmartre’s Sacré Coeur– insanely busy (Phil and Owen are there somewhere)
Artists of Montmartre – Place du Tertre

As we were waiting to take the funicular up to Sacré Coeur sadly my purse was picked and I lost over 200 euros. The good news was that our passports were not taken.  Luckily it was only the food money that was stolen. The beer money was safely tucked in Phil’s wallet! Then later that day my uncle’s pocket was picked but he only lost 100 euros. Our Paris experience was somewhat dampened by both the money loss and our inability to avoid millions of other tourists. The most mind blowing experience though was to go out on a Saturday morning to get groceries and not a store was open! We couldn’t believe it! Can you imagine going shopping in Canada on a Saturday morning and finding nothing open – not on your life! Luckily we had enough canned goods to fall back on until we could get to a store the next day – although finding stores open on a Sunday is challenging in itself.

Famous landmark – Chinagora Hotel at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne

Our first day out from Paris was interesting. As you can imagine the Seine shores are lined with industrial sites – not very pretty. But after about 4 hours we were once again seeing green banks and some lovely villages. Cruising past the Forests of Fontainebleau was gorgeous.

Beautiful houses all along the Forest of Fontainebleau
The trouble came when we wanted to moor for the night. Several supposed moorages didn’t exist as promised (sound familiar?)  so we went much further than we really wanted to. But all that fell by the wayside when we arrived in Moret-sur-Loing. What a stunning little village! Remnants of a medieval fort – parts of the wall and the portal gates remain. The church is 12th century and lots of houses are either ancient stone or tudor style half timbered black/brown and white. The painter Sisley lived here and he used Moret as a subject for many of his paintings. I think we can say that this is the most spectacular village we have ever visited!

St Mammès - Jousting on the water – someone is going to get wet
Moret-sur-Loing - Beautiful building housing the shop of the famous candy
Gorgeous little alleyways

Sisely painted here

Good thing we are enjoying it so much as we are here for several days longer than planned. Guess who’s on strike? Yup, the lock keepers on the Seine! In order to get to the Yonne River and Auxerre, we need to pass through just one more lock on the Seine. If it lasts much longer we may have to change our plans – AGAIN – and head down the canals of the centre – a series of 3 different canals that run one into the other. But we’ll wait until Wednesday evening before we make that decision.

As always we’ve been meeting boaters from many countries - that really is the best part of this whole experience. A nice Australian family arrived today just as a lovely couple from Plymouth left. Steve spent most of one afternoon helping Phil find the fault with our battery charger only to discover that it was fried. Oh well – we’ll have to get a new one when we get to a centre large enough to have a chandlery and a good boat mechanic. We still don’t know why the battery powered lights in the salon don’t work but we usually try to get a moorage with electricity so it’s not a disaster. Phil gets a little stressed by all the things that go wrong but realistically boats are just a another problem waiting to happen. It’s part of the charm of cruising!!

Thanking Steve (with wife Anne) for all his help with Champagne and strawberries (Clockwise from the left– Jean, Phil, Anne, Owen and Steve)

But, hey, we are in France! Baguettes are my new best friend, my aunt and uncle are wonderful company and seem to be enjoying themselves regardless and the weather has been superb. We finally got our first day of rain and we’ve been here for over a month. Phil’s birthday is today so we’ll go the patisserie and buy a gateau. Moret is also the home of a very special candy – Sucre d’Orge – a 300 year old recipe developed by nuns of the Prieure de Notre-Dame des Anges order. Good stuff!

Dining al fresco in Melun

We are looking forward to getting to Auxerre as we’ve heard so much about it and then heading down the Canal du Nivernais. More stories to follow!! Stay tuned.

Love to all – The Captain and the ex-Tourist Guide (I managed to resign just before being fired!)