Unexcused Absences

August 14 to August 20, 2016. We continue our story where we left off, at the enormous street-and-covered-market in Meaux (pronounced, like many French words, by dropping most of the letters, then changing the sound of the remaining ones, so you end up with what could have been written, “Mo”). We spent a few more days enjoying the sights and tastes of the town and our American boat neighbors. Eventually, we ended up at the Meaux WW I museum.

Cathedral and bishop’s palace in Meaux

In 1914, the German advance was literally stopped at the gates of the city in the First Battle of the Marne, which allowed the French forces to regroup and push the invaders back to a line roughly through south-western Belgium and northern Champagne. The Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux was built in 2011, and is based on the incredible private collection of Jean-Pierre Verney. The visual centerpiece of the museum is a reconstructed battlefield, with a typical French trench (characterized by wooden walls and supports) and a German trench (done in concrete) facing each other across a no-mans-land. The detail is exquisite, down to canteens, spent shell casings, mortars, and field glasses.

Museum of the Great War in Meaux

Another section gives the visitor a sense of life in the trenches. The slideshows, photographs from the front lines, are projected on the walls of a narrow passage, and the floor is a gray-brown vinyl covering over low-density foam. With each step you take, speakers play the sound of boots squishing in the mud. The side rooms have vintage film footage of the battles in progress, and the whole thing is just terrifying to imagine taking part in.

A pigeon-carrier truck

The German mobilization order from WW I

Recreated German trench

Impressive display of military shells

The museum did a fantastic job of covering all aspects of the war, not just the military hardware. There were sections devoted to front-line medicine, home-front rationing, propaganda, and a temporary exhibit on the types and purposes of the different obus (shells) used in the conflict. Throughout the museum were paintings by soldiers who had lived through the conflict. Meaux is just a quick train ride from Paris, so if you really want to get a sense of what things were like 100 years ago in France, make sure you take a day to visit this museum and its beautiful town.

A soldier’s painting from the Great War

From Meaux it was a short 8-hour cruise over two days for Après Ski to reach the Port de Plaisance de l’Arsenal, a ~200 slip marina located just steps from the Place de la Bastille in downtown Paris. Entering the city by boat was not quite as we expected. The Marne River was very shaded and tree-lined right up until it joined the Seine, only three kilometers upstream of Île-de-la Cité. We had expected an industrial river. Once on the Seine, though, the scenery was continuous factories and industry that gradually changed over to 19th century architecture as we approached the city center.

Approaching Paris on the Seine

Half a kilometer upstream of Île Saint-Louis is the entrance to the Arsenal marina, and we called on the VHF (channel 9) and locked up into possibly the coolest place to park your boat in all of Europe. The marina is served by two subway stations and numerous bus lines just steps from the boats, and the Gare de Lyon train station is a couple blocks away. It is a 15-20 minute walk to Notre Dame, and the eclectic Marais quartier (neighborhood) is less than a 10 minute walk away.

The Port de Plaisance de l’Arsenal marina

In usual Kent & Heather fashion, we had a busy schedule right from the start. The first evening we had a dinner rendezvous with Stuart, son of Tim & Heather (Chamamé), who lives in Paris. We last saw him during the luncheon of the boating party in Ay, Champagne, a few weeks ago.

Paris!

The first item on our tourist agenda the next day was to visit the Paris Catacombs, a large network of spaces carved out of the rock 80-100 feet down. The original chambers were excavated in the 12th century, in what were then the distant suburbs, to extract limestone for buildings. As time passed the now-empty chambers were forgotten. Then, in the 18th century, a series of cave-ins occurred in areas that were now part of Paris proper. So, King Louis XVI established the Inspection Générale des Carrières (Inspection of Mines) service to map the Parisian underground.

The reinforcements added in the late 18th century

At the same time, back on the surface, the Paris cemeteries were becoming overcrowded. Skeletons were piling up at an alarming rate, and to make room for the newly dead, the old bones were exhumed and stashed wherever they could. It was then that scientists were becoming aware of how infectious diseases were transmitted, and they realized that the stacks of skeletons and densely packed new corpses weren’t helping matters, from a health perspective, so they attempted to pass decrees limiting the use of existing cemeteries. This, you might be surprised to learn, didn’t work very well.

A few of the 6 million skeletons in the Catacombs

Meanwhile, the authorities were finishing up the mine mapping and reinforcement campaign, and the Prefect Police Lieutenant-General Alexandre Lenoir, who was nominally in charge of both the mines and the cemeteries, decided to combine the two efforts. It was decreed that all the surplus bones, close to 6 million complete skeletons, would be stored, in an orderly fashion of course, in the now reinforced mines.

One of numerous walls of bones

The Catacombs have been a tourist attraction ever since the first famous visitor, the Count of Artois (who later became King Charles X), visited in 1787. Tours were occasional up through the 1860’s, then monthly, then bi-weekly, and by popular demand they became daily events by the turn of the 20th century. Now it’s one of the most popular tours in Paris, and tickets are not sold in advance, so one must brave a 1-3 hour line that snakes around the Denfert-Rochereau Metro station. Even the current name is clever; d’Enfer is French for “Hell”, so naturellement you enter the Catacombs through the pavilion of the former Barrière d’Enfer (Gates of Hell) city gate.

The famous “barrel room”

Next, we took the obligatory walk through Notre Dame, a lovely cathedral in the center of old Paris. A short walk to the west is the Saint Chapelle, the private chapel of King Louis IX. The building represents the end-game of Gothic architecture, in that, at least from the inside, the structure appears to be made almost entirely of glass.

La Sainte-Chapelle

The Marais, the neighborhood north and east of Notre Dame, is famous for being the original Jewish quarter of Paris. Today, it’s a mix of falafel stands and stylish shops, interspersed with a few kebab restaurants. Thanks to Trip Advisor, we found a most interesting kebab place. The basis for their signature dish is roasted cauliflower, which is then augmented with diced tomatoes and peppers, and drizzled with a salty bean purée, all stuffed into freshly baked pita bread.

Lunch at Miznon

The next item on our Paris program was to climb the towers of Notre Dame. Friday and Saturday nights in the summer the towers are open until 11pm, and we figured a sunset view from up high should be pretty good. Unfortunately, scattered rain showers prevented a colorful sunset, but the view from the top as the lights of the city came on was easily worth the 10 euro entry fee.

Looking east from Notre Dame

As part of our ticket to see La Chapelle, we also got to visit the Conciergerie, which was the Parisian version of the Tower of London. It was here that many of the nobility were kept prisoner after the French Revolution, including their most famous “resident,” Marie Antoinette. The museum has restored one of the old cells, complete with a mannequin in a black veil, to show her living conditions before getting the chop. The room is surprisingly well appointed, given how much everyone seemed to hate her.

Marie Antoinette’s cell at La Conciergerie

At this point, Saturday night at the end of Week 6, we are four nights into our eight night stay in Paris. There will be much more about Paris in my next post.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 6

• Engine Hours: 8
• Kilometers: 47
• Locks: 8
• Moorings:  137.40 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 82
• Kilometers: 456
• Locks: 151
• Moorings: 253.30 Euros

France 2016 – Week 6 Route

Mobile kitchen from WW I

Heading west out of Meaux

Paris has a LOT of bridges

Death visits George Washington?

Not sure how to caption this

Frieze at Notre Dame; “sinners, this way”

Speaking of sinning…

Detail at Sainte-Chapelle

Hôtel de Ville de Paris (city hall)

Gargoyle at Notre Dame

Wood panel at Notre Dame

Bells in the south tower

Ceiling at La Conciergerie

August 7 to August 13, 2016. After only one week in Mareuil-sur-Ay we really didn’t want to leave, but Paris was calling, as was our flight home in about six weeks, so Sunday morning we bid a reluctant farewell to Tim and Heather of Chamamé, plus the locals Zeno and Vero, Jeremy, crazy-man-who-owns-three-boats Jérome, and Antoine.

Cumières, just west of Mareuil-sur-Ay

Our first stop was Damery, where we ran into a couple we had met in Chalons-en-Champagne two summers ago, Chris and Karen of Moonglow. We stayed just long enough to spend the night and get a couple of baguettes from the boulanger opposite the church. The next day we had a nice cruise to Dormans, where we moored in front of Peter and Pam of Arianne, last seen in Bar-le-Duc a few weeks ago. They had their hands full with their friends onboard, a couple from Switzerland plus two teenage girls.

A freight train passes through Dormans

The next day Après Ski entered new territory again, and we continued downstream (west) on the Marne. Our Tuesday stop was Chateau Thierry, site of two major battles, in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars and in 1918 between the US and Germany. The WW I battle was one of the very first actions of the American Expeditionary Forces, which were formed and sent to France to help end World War I.

The river view upstream of Château-Thierry

The town was also one of two sites of the famous Paris Gun, employed by the Germans during the summer of 1918 to lob shells at Paris from 75 miles away. The gun wasn’t that useful from a strategic standpoint, as during the shell’s three minute flight time it was subject to both wind and the Coriolis effect, but as a psychological weapon it caused quite a panic. The projectile reached a maximum altitude of 25 miles, making it the first man-made object in history to reach the stratosphere.

Château-Thierry

There are some nice memorials to and restored battlefields from the US Army’s efforts during WW I, but the weather was sketchy and it would have been quite a bike ride, so we will have to visit them some other year. Instead we met our boat neighbor, Chris, of the 90-year-old Dutch barge Esme (his wife Diana was out of town). He has cared for the boat incredibly well and in fact is still in touch with the children and grandchildren of the original Dutch owner.

Geert and Simone’s barge “Sanne”

Next up was a tiny pontoon, only big enough for one boat, in Pont-de-Charly upstream of the lock. The town had both a Super U grocery store and a street market the following morning. Our market light has been on “low” for a while, since the last market we visited was in Chalons-en-Champagne several weeks ago. From Pont-de-Charly it was on to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where we double parked against the hull of Sanne, owned by our new friends Geert and Simone (and the dog Tara), from Holland.

Charly-sur-Marne

La Ferté had a nice street market the next morning and we took full advantage of the fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat. La Ferté is famous for supplying millstones throughout the world. A millstone needs to be soft enough to cut and shape to the proper size, but not so soft that it dissolves into the grain you’re milling. La Ferte´s stones are apparently juuuuusssst right.

Street market in La Ferté

From there we continued downstream to Mary-sur-Marne, and its one-boat pontoon. The local restaurant was on conges annuel (annual vacation), but fortunately the town was big enough to have a boulangerie up the hill near the church. We have had no bread emergencies yet this year, and have no intention of starting now.

Grapevines in the Marne valley

And then it was on to Meaux, famous for their cheese, Brie de Meaux. As we pulled into our slip at the town dock we saw that the barge next to us was American (it had a US Coast Guard registration number in the window). In addition, there was an American flag flying from a boat a couple slips away. And before we even got organized, a sailboat pulled in also flying Old Glory. So in our sixth summer of cruising the French canals, where we occasionally will see one other American boat at a time, there were now four parked in a row in Meaux.

The Marne river in Meaux

We invited everyone over to “our” dock and spread out the tables for a big pot-luck happy hour, which sort of morphed into a dinner, as these things tend to do. Present were Diane and Jean-François of the sailboat Seatern, Don and Sam of D’Eerste, and Anna cruising solo on the biggest barge in port, Isabelle. Anna lost her husband a few years ago but continues to live in France on her barge, spending most of the year in the Paris Arsenal marina except for a couple months in the summer when she parks in Meaux. I believe she is the deputy “mayor” of the Arsenal.

Metal sculpture celebrating the vineyard workers

I need to share a story that’s close to my heart. The French believe that cheese is to be eaten sparingly, a bite here or a nibble there. Our French friends definitely look sideways at us as we consume cheese by the kilo. But in a little market, somewhere along the Marne, we came across a locally-made cheese called “La Tentatrice” (the temptress). And at the bottom of the label was written, in French, “to be consumed without moderation.” Finally, someone in France understands us (and knows their audience).

“A consommer sans modération”

The next morning we visited our third street market in four days, but I’m getting ahead of myself because it’s now Sunday, and technically part of Week 6. So I’ll be back with more of our visit to Meaux in my next post.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 5

• Engine Hours: 18
• Kilometers: 137
• Locks: 13
• Moorings: 2 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 74
• Kilometers: 409
• Locks: 143
• Moorings: 115.9 Euros

France 2016 – Week 5 Route

Speed Rabbit Pizza

Planet Chicken (Halal Restaurant)

McDoner’s Kebab Shop

Church in Damery

Bollard on a commercial barge

Putting the “château” in Château-Thierry

Church tower in Dormans

House and vines

Boat harbor in Meaux

Approaching La Ferté

July 31 to August 6, 2016. Sunday morning we said goodbye to Julia and Richard (on Ettie) and put Chalons-en-Champagne in our rearview mirror. Five hours later we pulled into our favorite port in Champagne, Mareuil-sur-Ay (try pronouncing that correctly with a British accent). And as if it weren’t good enough to be moored up in the heart of Champagne country, we parked right next to our good friends from Australia, Tim and Heather, of the Dutch cruiser Chamamé, with whom we spent a week in Metz last year.

Mareuil-sur-Ay

Tim and Heather are now in the third year of their two-year cruise (doesn’t that sound familiar). Their son, Stuart, lives in Paris full-time, so they tend to not travel too far afield but instead hang out in one spot for weeks at a time and receive regular visits from him. They have taken particularly well to Mareuil-sur-Ay, considering they pulled in a month ago and haven’t budged since.

Commercial barge traffic jam on the way to Mareuil

Since they are now honorary residents of Mareuil (in fact, Tim may have been elected mayor by the time you read this), they hooked us up with the local live-aboard community. A number of barges are permanently parked along the canal-side east of the “visitor’s” port, and we met Zeno and Veronique and their friend Jeremy, plus Jérome, who owns three (!) boats (more on him later), plus Antoine, who lives on one of Jérome’s boats.

Jeremy, Zeno, Jérome, Tim, Tim’s Heather, and Heather’s hand on Zeno’s boat

The whole gang (the live-aboards plus Tim and Heather) gathers every evening at 6-ish in the park to play pétanque. Our skills were rusty beyond belief (it’s been 11 months since we’d played), but they gamely included us in their evening games. As the week wore on we got a bit better, and by our final evening 7 days later the étrangers (foreigners) actually beat les habitants (the residents) in a thrilling (at least for us) come-from-behind display of incredible pétanque skill. Or maybe it was just that the locals were drinking champagne faster than we were.

Heather launches a “boule”

Tim takes some critical measurements

The evening pétanque gang

We also had the good fortune to get a visit from our American friends who live in southern Burgundy, Ron and Lynn, whom we last saw at their other house in Charleston, South Carolina, last November, while we were taking Miss Adventure down the ICW to Florida. They drove up for a couple nights to check out Champagne, and we had a terrific time visiting Épernay, tasting champagne, and strolling the Avenue de Champagne.

On the Avenue de Champagne

Some Champagne vines

Very old gate in Épernay

How to cook with Champagne

One day we arranged a special tour at our favorite Champagne producer, Zimmerlin-Flamant, up the hill in Mutigny. We didn’t know quite how special it would be, though, until we arrived with Ron and Lynn and Tim’s Heather (Tim was under the weather that day, sadly). Madame Flamant had arranged a special vineyard tour in Monsieur Zimmerlin’s World War II, beautifully restored, vintage Dodge truck. The truck was a larger version of the famous WWII Jeep, and showed up in France by the tens of thousands starting on D-day. After the war it was cheaper to leave the vehicles in France than ship them back to the US, and there are Dodge WC enthusiasts all over Europe, including, apparently, M. Zimmerlin.

Our vineyard tour in the Dodge

In the production room

Zimmerlin-Flamant Champagne aging in their cellars

He loaded the five of us in the back, and with his sister riding shotgun, drove us the short distance out to his vines. She gave a wonderful description of the grape-growing process, and delved into all kinds of details. Back at the maison, Mme. Flamant took us through the small facility and showed us their bottling equipment, pupitre (the racks that hold the bottles while the sediment settles), the storage caves, and the labeling equipment. And of course we finished with a delicious sampling of their Brut, Brut Réserve, and Rosé.

Mme. Flamant pours for the tasting

Z-F’s delicious 1er Cru rosé

The view from M. Zimmerlin’s vines

After a picnic lunch overlooking the Marne River valley, we headed back downhill to Mareuil-sur-Ay for another Champagne house visit, this time to meet Jean-Paul Hébrart of Marc Hébrart Champagne. His operation is about 8 times the size of Zimmerlin-Flamant’s, producing six thousand cases per year from 15 hectares (about 40 acres). We first enjoyed his wine at our friend’s birthday party in Paris in Week 1, and were pleasantly surprised at the time to see that we would be parked in his village several weeks hence. His millésime (special vintage) wines were out of this world, and his blanc-de-blancs (“white from white”, or white Champagne made exclusively from the Chardonnay grape) were the best of that type we’ve ever tasted.

But don’t take it from me – here is an excerpt from the professional wine critic Peter Liem;

“Hébrart’s wines have a broad appeal: if you like to think about your wines, they’re intellectually engaging enough to satisfy you; on the other hand, if you’re just looking to drink, they’re simply delicious.”

Simply delicious, indeed. I’ve never actually engaged with my wine at an intellectual level, so I guess I still have a lot to learn about being a wine snob. And I clearly have my work cut out for me; I could never come up with a review like this, from Terry Theise:

“Jean-Paul’s wines are… altogether less chunky than Bouzy, not unlike Verzy but richer, far more ‘comm-il-faut’ than the savage power of Verzenay, less softly perfumey than Ambonnay… if it were Burgundy, Mareuil-sur-Ay could well be Morey-St. Denis.”

Who knew? I certainly didn’t. To me, they’re simply delicious.

Picnic dinner with Tim and Heather in the vines above Ay

The rest of the week we relaxed, and rode our bikes, and walked through the vineyards, and did some work, and played more pétanque, and had many late nights eating pot-luck dinners with Tim and Heather and the locals. After hanging out with Australians all week, I feel compelled to bring up their country’s particular take on the English language. While every English-speaking country has their own quirky words, the Aussies have refined and distilled English to its essential elements. An Australian can say, “Take the slab and a kitchen roll to the Pom in the budgie smugglers living in the granny flat,” and an American would have no idea that what they actually said was, “Take the case of beer and some paper towels to the Englishman wearing the speedos who lives in the attached apartment.” Not that an Englishman would be caught dead wearing speedos these days (that’s for the Germans and the eastern Europeans), but you get the point.

Dinner with Tim, Heather, Stuart, and Fannie

We had one more bonus event our last day in Mareuil-sur-Ay. We planned a lunch at a restaurant a few km down the canal, Rôtisserie Henry IV, with Tim, Heather, their son Stuart, and his girlfriend Fannie, in from Paris for the weekend. One of Jérome’s three boats is an old wooden Maaskruiser, popular among the bourgeoisie in Holland from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. Jérome offered to drive us to the restaurant in style, so we all dressed up in our best “luncheon of the boating party” outfits and sipped Champagne while he piloted us to our lunch.

On the way to lunch

Inside Jérome’s restored Maaskruiser

Our ride to lunch; the Maaskruiser “Bullet”

Seven days in one place is a big deal for us; in the old days, before our new electric and diesel water heater, we couldn’t stay in one place more than a couple days without running out of hot water. Now, with infinite hot water, we can stay as long as we like. And in a place like Mareuil-sur-Ay, with our friends Tim and Heather, we could have easily stayed a month. Maybe then I would have learned to be a better wine snob.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 4

• Engine Hours: 5
• Kilometers: 27
• Locks: 5
• Moorings: 35 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 56
• Kilometers: 272
• Locks: 130
• Moorings: 113.9 Euros

France 2016 – Week 4 Route

Jérome, pilot and owner of the “Bullet”

A mural in Ay, Champagne

A church in Dizy

Mareuil-sur-Ay

Tours-sur-Marne

Vines in Mutigny

Barge and large house in Mareuil-sur-Ay

Jeremy launches his attack

Zeno takes his shot

M. Zimmerlin’s vintage Dodge WC

July 24 to July 30, 2016. When we got back to Bar-le-Duc from our weekend in Brussels, we met our new Australian boat neighbors, Peter and Pam, who have not one but two French canal boats. Talk about an awesome setup; they keep one in the south for when they get the urge to cruise the Midi, and one in the north to cover the rest of France.

A hilltop fortress on the drive home from Brussels

Bar-le-Duc, like many French cities, has a long and interesting history. In the first century AD the Roman Road ran through the Ornain valley, and a town called Caturiges developed on the right bank. About a thousand years ago, Duke Frederick of Ardennes fortified a spur of rock that became the Upper Town. Over five hundred years ago, a long period of peace and prosperity defined the renaissance in Bar-le-Duc a century before the official “Renaissance” of the mid 16th century for the rest of Europe. Thus, the town is filled with beautiful old houses whose architecture was inspired by ancient Rome and Greece.

The “Maison du Duc” in Bar-le-Duc

Beginning in the mid 17th century, though, the town began to suffer. First came the 30-years war, a century later it was annexed to the kingdom of France, and then came three wars in succession; the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, WWI from 1914-1918, and WWII from 1940-1945. Today the town is a prosperous rail terminal that serves Paris to the west and Alsace to the east.

These days, Bar-le-Duc is famous for a sculpture by Ligier Richier (a pupil of Michelangelo) of a prince (René de Châlon) who was killed in battle. But this sculpture, while incredibly life-like, is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Richier’s commission, from the prince’s widow, was for the sculpture of her husband to be what he would look like three years after he had died.

Bar-le-Duc town hall

The “decaying prince” statue

Closeup of “decaying prince”

Church in the upper town

From Bar-le-Duc we continued west on the Canal du Marne a Rhin, and after a couple days travel reached Vitry-le-Francois, where we entered familiar territory (we passed through Vitry two years ago in 2014). We did not linger in town, other than to stock up on supplies at the local E. Lelerc supermarché, and by the next morning we were underway north towards Chalons-en-Champagne. Two years ago we accidentally timed our visit with the last three days of their big summer music festival, and this year, by pure chance, we did the exact same thing.

Prefecture, Chalons-en-Champagne

This year’s music festival did not feature the same level of talent as two years ago, unfortunately. Although we attended four performances, only the final one, Saturday night, was something worth seeing. And I say “performance” with a degree of literary license. The “musician” looked to be a DJ, in the sense that he was doing DJ things like twiddling knobs and bopping his head to the beat and focusing with great intensity on his table full of electronics. But it soon became apparent that he wasn’t actually doing anything.

I wandered to the side of his setup and sure enough, his right hand was on the master volume knob of his mixer and his left was tweaking his graphic equalizer, but he wasn’t actually creating any music, at least not on stage. There were no mixers or drum machines or samplers or any other tools of the DJ trade. He had clearly created the mix back at home and could have done his entire “performance” while splayed in a barcalounger and smoking a Gauloise. But he was making sure to play the part, furiously twisting knobs and sweating and wiping his brow with a towel.

A forgettable concert in the town square

Weak performances notwithstanding, we still had a terrific three nights at the port. We reconnected with our English friends Richard and Julia on their gorgeous barge Ettie, whom we met in 2013 on the Doubs river in Franche-Comté. We also made time to eat at Le Royal Kebab, a spectacular eaterie just east of the big cathedral. The meat is cooked nicely crispy, and the white sauce is accented with mint. And the fries were just as we had remembered them, crisp and hot and delicious.

Roasted chickens at the market

We had an “only in France” moment Saturday in Chalons; I needed to get a small repair to my camera bag strap, so we dropped in to a cordonnerie (shoe repair) place about a half hour before it closed. The repair was literally a 1/4 inch of stitching, that would take 60 seconds from start to finish. The owner was sitting at a desk reading the paper, and I showed him what I needed. Here’s how the conversation went:

Cordonnerie owner: I’m sorry, it is close to closing, I do not have time.

Me: But it’s a very small repair, and I’m happy to pay.

Cordonnerie owner: No, I would have to oil the machine.

Me:

I need to point out that there was no evidence that he had any customers that day, or any for the forseeable future. There did not appear to be any work in the queue. In fact, there was not much evidence of any work occurring at all in his shop. I’ll just never quite understand why he wouldn’t want to make several euros for about one minute’s work, but such are the charms of living in France.

“Florida Miami ’88 New York”

One final story from Chalons; at the market, a vendor was selling standard European t-shirts, the kind with random English words on the front. Normally they don’t cause us a second glance, but these shirts stood out for their mis-appropriation of the English language. The first one that caught my eye said “Florida Miami ’88 New York,” but my favorite, by far, was “Tank War – the style since new fashion to.” I cannot possibly make this stuff up.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 3

• Engine Hours: 16
• Kilometers: 82
• Locks: 41
• Moorings: 18.50 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 51
• Kilometers: 245
• Locks: 125
• Moorings: 78.90 Euros

France 2016 – Week 3 Route

A drawbridge chain in Montmédy

Vintage ironwork on the drawbridge

Goats lounging at the lock

Can’t imagine why this business went kaput; maybe it’s because karaoké, lunch, and a winning poker hand have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

Karaoké, Sandwiches, and a Royal Flush

A church in Chalons

The “DJ doing nothing”

Vintage coffee grinder

The cool “LED-illuminated inflatable elephant” in Chalons

July 17 to July 23, 2016. After the big party in Paris Saturday night we slept in to a deliciously late 10am, then packed up the car and drove back along the Marne River to Toul, where Après Ski has been parked for the past 5 days or so.

Toul Cathedral sound-and-light show

We decided to stay in town one more day to catch up on email and other activities after our crazy schedule during the past week. It wasn’t hard to make the decision to stay since there is a truly spectacular boulangerie just across the street from the port de plaisance. When we finally got going we cruised seven hours to a rural mooring at Sauvoy, on the Marne-Rhine canal 7 locks from the summit at Mauvages. Heather pulled out the stops and cooked an amazing Boeuf Bourgignon dinner. We had to be careful to eat this where no one could see us, because I paired the dinner with a delicious Bordeaux wine (a St. Martin Listrac-Médoc 2010), and we are well aware of the faux pas of drinking Bordeaux wine with this most classic Burgundy recipe. But because we were at a rural mooring, we got away with it.

Boeuf Bourgignon with (shhhh…) Bordeaux wine

The next day we continued to the summit, where we passed through the 4.8km (almost 3 mile) Mauvages tunnel, amazingly only the second longest one in the French canal network. At a prudently reduced speed it took the better part of 50 minutes to transit the tunnel. Interestingly, a VNF worker accompanied us on his bike the entire way. For the past day and a half we have been in completely new territory for us, and each year it gets harder to find unconquered stretches of canal. We will soon be back on familiar ground in Champagne, but hope to once again visit unexplored waterways by traveling first on the Marne to Paris and then on the Seine back to Burgundy for the winter.

Inside the almost 5km Mauvages Tunnel

Once out the other side of the summit tunnel we began a month-long stretch of downhill travel. The canal here winds through beautiful countryside, with hills alternately covered in wheat fields or forest. We found a picnic table and some shade from a tree above lock 11 at Tréveray. Both the shade (and the 50 minutes in the tunnel) were appreciated because the outside temperature was over 90 degrees.

Beautiful rural parking spot

I have to mention, too, the clarity of the water. Since Toul, the water has been clear enough to see all the way to the bottom (although the canal is admittedly only 5 feet deep). Normally there is only a foot or so of visibility, if that. There were some impressive trout, and we were puzzled that the nationwide armada of French pêcheurs (fishermen) do not yet seem to have discovered this part of the canal network.

Really clear water in the canal

From Tréveray we descended 22 locks in 22 kilometers to Tannois. We parked at a VNF chantier (work yard), and the only thing of note was a sign we saw next to a train crossing. It basically laid out, over multiple paragraphs and in excruciating detail, what would happen if someone interfered with the operation of the automatic crossing gate. What could probably have been covered by a short sign along the lines of “don’t interfere with the crossing gate” was instead:

“It is strictly forbidden to prevent the operation of this installation. An offender exposes himself to judicial prosecution. The approach of a train is announced by; illumination of red flashing lights; the ding of a bell; the lowering of the half barriers. Anyone who finds an abnormality in the functioning of this installation is asked to inform the chief of the (preferably nearby) train station.” And then this is followed by phone numbers for the relevant authorities.

Train crossing alert written by an American lawyer

Making sure to not interfere, we continued our short walk around the village. Thursday morning we finished this week’s cruise and moored up in Bar-le-Duc. We needed a secure spot to park the boat for our weekend trip to Brussels. I hopped on a train and rode the hour back to Toul to retrieve our rental car and buy some more bread from the delicious boulangerie I mentioned earlier.

A chateau in Bar-le-Duc

That evening we met Doug and Flora, two Scots on their boat Liberté. They know our friends Jan and Bill (La Bonne Vie), whom we’ve known now for two summers. They seemed to enjoy French cheese as much as we do, so for once we were not embarrassed by how much of this French delicacy we consumed.

Friday we drove the Voie Sacrée (the famous WW I supply line between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun) on our way to Brussels. Heather’s Dad and his wife were passing through on business, so we had arranged a weekend getaway with them. We rented a large apartment rental a few blocks from the tourist walking district, and the four of us managed to check off all the required elements of a weekend in Belgium. Visit to see the Manneken Pis? Check. Beer at À La Mort Subite? Check. Waffles from a street vendor? Gourmet Chocolate? Mussels in Brussels? Check, check, and check.

Crowds at the Manneken Pis in Brussels

The house beer at À La Mort Subite was interesting. “Interesting,” in the same way you answer when the waiter asks how you liked the house specialty, “sheep’s kidney in a broth of stomach lining”, you just ate. “Mort Subite” translates as “Sudden Death,” but it could just as easily translate as “famous Belgian beer that tastes like sour work-out socks, and not in a good way.”

The main tourist square in Brussels

But we survived both the famous beer and the Brussels terrorist community and had a great visit with Dave and Cynthia. On our way home to Bar-le-Duc we stopped in Dinant, a Belgian town near the French border we had visited by boat two years earlier. Favorite wife wanted to stop at her favorite Belgian restaurant, Chez Bouboule. Their version of moules-frites (steamed mussels and fries) with a curry cream sauce was even better than we remembered.

Brussels town hall

Brussels stock exchange

Moules-frites in Dinant

Evening in the Brussels dining district

While waiting for the restaurant to open we saw a very strange thing, even for Europe; we heard a marching band coming around the corner, and looked up to see the band all riding bicycles. For instruments that required two hands to play, the bike was a tandem with a dedicated pedaler/driver, and for instruments that called for only one hand, the pedaler/driver/musician were the same person. The only thing that came to mind was, “only in Europe.”

Only in Europe; a bike-riding “marching” band

France 2016 Cruise – Week 2

• Engine Hours: 20
• Kilometers: 82
• Locks: 62
• Moorings: 4.40 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 35
• Kilometers: 163
• Locks: 84
• Moorings: 60.40 Euros

France 2016 – Week 2 Route

The barge “Marianne” in Toul

An “Americana” themed restaurant at the supermarket in Toul

There is a restaurant in Brussels called “Drug Opera”

Canal scenery near Bar-le-Duc

Harvest-time for rapeseed

A hazy morning on the “Voie Sacrée”

A heron getting some sun

One of many locks near Bar-le-Duc

Dinant, Belgium