France 2017 – Arrival (he said)
by Kent 15 Sep 2017August 26, 2017 to September 4, 2017 – Auxerre to Paris. First, a warm thank-you to concerned readers who wrote asking if we were OK – we are fine, just busy. Apparently, too busy having fun to write about having fun in France. So the recaps of our summer 2017 canal cruise in France are clearly late. We’ve been busy, although I can’t figure out why. We only have two boats and multiple places we live during the year. Anyway.
Since it’s now spring, and we’re back from a six week skiing trip to Europe (and in fact are at anchor in the Bahamas on our other boat as I type), this will simply be a placeholder post that will (hopefully) be followed up with actual stories and pics from our trip. The “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version” is that we only had 6 weeks in France, so we picked up our boat in Auxerre (north-west Burgundy), cruised 5 straight days to Paris, and spent the following 22 days moored at the Paris Arsenal marina.
“Après Ski” coming out of her winter storage shed
We didn’t have a chance to linger much on our way downstream to Paris, but we did enjoy overnight stops in Sens, Moret-sur-Loing, and Melun. A few highlights were a visit to what we in America would call a country fair (near Auxerre), a street market in Moret-sur-Loing followed by a stroll around town where we watched two swans enjoying the waterfowl equivalent of a bubble bath below a small weir, and a visit to the Vaux-le-Vicomte chateau “candlelit evening” outside of Melun. Every Saturday evening during the summer the chateau lights over 2000 candles in the windows and around the gardens, and invites the public to visit for 20 euros. We had beautiful clear skies that night and it was just by chance that we were parked in Melun on the one day per week this was available.
On the river outside of Moret-sur-Loing
I’ll have much more to talk about in future posts about our 22-day stay in Paris. Hopefully it won’t be another 4 months until I get a chance to actually write about it.
Not just America that does mechanical bull-riding
Tractor show at the “county fair”
Cruising downstream at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne
Mill-house in Moret-sur-Loing
Cathedral in Sens
Wood carving on a house
Swans taking a bubble bath in Moret-sur-Loing
Vaux-le-Vicomte before the candle-lighting
Night settling on the chateau
Full moon over Vaux-le-Vicomte
Street market in Moret
One flood per century in Moret
The beautiful, but flood-prone, Moret-sur-Loing
Vaux-le-Vicomte “Candlelit Evening”
