Ken and Janet’s News

Barge Day 7

Itinerary

7:30 Breakfast
8:30 Leave on the bus for Paris
11:30 Arrive at the Hotel Regina in Paris

End of Barge Trip!

Breakfast was a somewhat somber affair this morning since we all knew the trip was nearly over. We said our goodbyes to the crew, had a group picture and then boarded the bus to go back to Paris. We had one rest stop for Neil (the driver) to get some coffee and as he predicted the traffic in Paris was terrible but we made pretty
good time all things considered. The weather today was sunny and cool. After saying our goodbyes to each other, we all dispersed to our hotels or to the airport for our last hours or days in Paris before returning home. The Jensen’s and Switzer’s enjoyed a nice lunch on I’lle St. Louis (near where we are staying) and then dinner at the
nearby La Marée Verte restaurant near St. Germaine Blvd. We leave Sunday and the Jensen’s leave Monday. So this is the last message to the whole group.
Gary Carroll is the only one who got a group picture – so I won’t be able to put one on the web site until I get a copy from him. This was a “once in a lifetime” trip that we will have memories of for the rest of our lives! Thanks again to everyone who contributed to making the trip a successful one. Some of them had a special part – Lucille for coming up with the idea and getting us going, Ginny for helping keep us informed, Galusha’s for getting us together as a group and all you others that helped make it happen!

Thank you Big Time!
Kws

Notre-Dame de Paris at night

Barge Day 6
Thursday October 17th

Itinerary

Villeneuve sur Yonne à Sens

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Litote departs
Enjoy your morning cruise
12:30 Lunch
After lunch free time to walk/shop in Sens
16:30 Guided walking tour of Sens city center and the cathedral
followed by free time to explore the shops and
cafes. (Meet Neil outside the cathedral at 4:30pm)

20:00 Farewell Gala dinner on board

Today we woke to cloudy skies and cool temperatures. It had rained during the night but wasn’t raining at 8:00am. Many of us walked or ran before breakfast since we didn’t get as much exercise yesterday as we had been used to. We started cruising at 9ish and are heading to Sens, our final stop. We found out that on Friday we
will have breakfast early and be on the bus by 8:30am. Neil said that if we were to leave 30 minutes later, it would take an hour and half longer to get back to Paris, since so many people in Paris head to the country for the weekend. We arrived at Sens just in time for lunch on the barge. After lunch we had free time to shop and
explore the town of Sens. The close by cyber café’s computers were not working so we continued to look around the town and try to find internet connectivity. We then tried an Internet terminal that was in La Post (their post office) but they had it set up to not accept cookies and so yahoo connectivity didn’t work at all. I tried using a
phone in the Best Western hotel near La Post, but had no luck. I could dial the number with the phone but got no dial tone on my computer. Gary Carroll eventually found a computer game store that had 8 Internet terminals that some people were able to use. The keyboard on the computer at La Post and in the game store had a very
strange layout of characters so that about half of the keys were in the wrong place for a person used to touch-typing on a US keyboard. It made it very difficult to do anything. I finally found another hotel and was able to dial the 800
number for Earthlink France and emailed days 4 and 5 journal entries and a picture from each day. By then it was time to go to the cathedral for the guided tour. We gathered at 4:30 but the guide didn’t show up until about 5:15.
He was very knowledgeable, but gave us almost too much detail about the history of the cathedral. I had not realized how important the town of Sens was from a religious perspective. Once again we saw vivid evidence of the impact on the cathedral of the French Revolution and the War of Religion. Most statues that were reachable had their heads knocked off. One statue that still had it’s head was because someone had put a hat worn by many revolutionaries on it and it was spared.
After the tour, I went back to the hotel and got online again and updated the web site with text and some pictures. At that point I needed to get back to the barge to dress for our gala final dinner. Normally the 20 of us ate at 5 separated tables that seated 4 people. For our last dinner, Loraine and Neil from the crew joined us
and they put all the tables together in a row at an angle in the eating area, so we all were seated at one very long table for 22 people. Once again Horvé (the chef) outdid himself with a wonderful meal of duck and all the trimmings. Loraine (the manager) introduced the crew again and they repeated that we were their favorite
passengers for the past week. They had been taking Polaroid pictures and putting them in a book that captured some of the events of the week. They asked us to write in the book and around the pictures with our impressions of the week. Most previous groups only had 3 or 4 pictures, but we had 12. At the end of the meal, Neil asked
each of us to take some of the flower petals that decorated the table and take them to the sun deck (amidships) and make a wish and throw the flowers overboard. It was a very moving and symbolic way to end the journey.
We told the crew to all come and visit us in Colorado (or California) when they get a chance. It was sad to have the week nearly over, but we all had a really good time and really enjoyed the time with each other and with the crew. The crew found out today that their last trip of the season will start on Saturday and then they are all off for 4 months until the barge season starts again next March. We all go back home at various times over the next few days and some people are going to Morocco. We head back to Paris tomorrow at 8:30am!

Just before start of last day of crusing at
Villeneuve sur Yonne

Hackneys before the gala dinner

After the flower toss

Lunch Menu
Déjeuner

Saumon en croûte de pesto
Salmon in a pesto crust

Salade de tomates au mozzarella
Tomato and mozzarella salad

Salade de betteraves rouges à la moutarde de Meaux
Beetroot salad with Meaux mustard dressing

Salade de pâtes aux ecrevisses
Pasta and crayfish salad

Plateau de fromages, salade
Cheese platter, salad

Coffee

Côtes d’Auxerre
Anjou

Barge Day 5

MERCREDI 16 octobre 2002

Joigny -à Villeneuve sur Yonne

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Litote departs
Enjoy your morning cruise
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Excursion to Auxerre with a guided tour of the cathedral of this historic
town followed by free time to stroll, do some shopping or enjoy one
of the many cafés.

Return to the Litote
17:30 Dinner on board

This morning we woke up to rain. Several of us went to the market that was located in
a park and building near where the barge was docked. The rain stopped before we
started cruising. Since we are on the river all the exercise was done before we left.
There is no towpath along the river – at least so far. We should get a lot of exercise this afternoon. At lunch we had a contest to decorate our butter dish in 5 minutes with some material provided by the crew. The competition was very intense. The winners were table 2 who made a turkey and had a very good gobble-gobble sound effect. Table 5 lost big time with our attempt at a CU logo carved into the butter and using pepper to make it black on the yellow butter background. We also had a caricature made out of the materials who was supposed to be a CU fan. Unfortunately the crew had no idea what we were trying to do (even though we sang the CU fight song to them) and we were 5th out of 5 tables. As our prize we got to give the cheese presentation for the evening meal. (The table by the way was made up of the very creative John Jensen, Susan Sterling, and Janet and Ken Switzer). After lunch and many shed tears at the outcome of the butter decoration contest, we walked to the bus (which until today had been parked very near the barge, but today since the boat is docked at the city harbor of Villeneuve sur Yonne and the town has a wall around it and the gates into the city center are narrower than the bus).
It sprinkled on and off all morning and as we headed towards the bus it started raining again. We drove to the city of Auxerre (pronounced Aus-saire) and took a tour of the Cathedral St. Etieene dé Auxerre . (see pictures) This is one of three cathedrals in Auxerre. Neil gave us lots of history about the Cathedral and talked about many of the stories conveyed by the statues on the church. After the tour we had free time to wander about the city, to shop and we hoped to use the Internet café. Unfortunately the 2 DSL lines at the Internet café were not working so they had closed for the day. We went all over the city and everyone told us to go back to the Internet café that we knew was closed. The provocateurs from table five went to a MonoPrix grocery store and got lots of props for our cheese presentation. We searched diligently for Velveeta and Cheese Whiz but were only able to come up with substitutes that looked like the cheese mainstays of the US. So after suitable preparation (tablecloths for aprons) and lots of sort of French pronunciation of normal English words we were ready! After the appetizer and entrée we were ready for the cheese course. John “Pierre” Jensen outdid himself in his description of the cheeses from the US. The high point was when he put a pre-cut slice of Velveeta (look-alike) on the wall and said you can tell how good it is by how long it sticks to the wall. (see pictures). Janet, Susan, and Ken were helpful assistants to John in the presentation. (the real Bleu des Causses was excellent by the way). For desert we had a Chef’s surprise, which turned out to be a flaming cheesecake in celebration of Lucille Carroll’s birthday, which was today. After dinner the card sharks had another game with 12 people playing simultaneously. Tomorrow will be our last cruise day, since we end up at Sons and will take the bus back to Paris Friday morning.

kws

View from bridge over the river in Auxerre

Déjeuner

Feuilleté aux legumes
Vegetables in pastry

Salade de celery en branche aux fruits secs
Celery and dried fruits salad

Salade de choux blanc aux pistaches
White cabbage and pistachio salad

Taboul’e ux crevettes
Couscous with shrimp

Crème brûlée à l’amande
Almond crème brûlée

Café au bar
Coffee at the bar

Entre Deux Mers
Epineuil

Barge Day 4

Schedule

Brienon à Joigny
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Litote departs
Enjoy your morning cruise
12:00 Lunch
13:45 We depart on excursion to the historic village of Vezelay.
14:00 Guided tour of the basilica and château terrace followed by free time
to stroll or shop.
Return to the Litote
19:30 Dinner on board

Today we cruised in the morning and had an excursion to historic Vezelay in the afternoon. We went through three locks and then were on the river Yonne. The river is much busier than the canal. There is much more industry and larger towns on the river. The locks seem to be further apart and are larger and more automated
than the locks on the canal. Some people biked, walked, or ran while we were still on the canal. Others took it easy on the barge. The weather was cool but not cold in the am. Because of the change in the route on the river, our excursion was quite a ways away and it took us about an hour to drive to the Basilica at Vezelay. It was raining when we got off the bus so we broke out the umbrellas. After we got in the cathedral the rain stopped. We had a Jerusalem monk as a guide in the Basilica. He was very knowledgeable and had many stories to tell us about the history of the area and the Basilica specifically. The Basilica was huge! It was a combination of the Gothic and Romanesque styles. The Basilica was built on the apex of a hill that sloped
down steeply on three sides and even the fourth side was relatively steep. The town was built on the less steep side and was very picturesque. We stopped for some hot chocolate for people to help warm up and some of the ladies went shopping. We bussed back to the Litote docked in the town of Joigny. We had another delicious dinner and most of the group played the card game called “oh hell.” (see picture – people are
very noisy when they play) I found a hotel nearby that let me use one of their phones to connect to the internet and I was finally able to upload my journal entries and some of the pictures for the first 3 days of the barge trip. Tomorrow we have our excursion to Auxerre and we cruise to Villeneuve sur Yonne.
kws

John got a small cheese ration due to previous misbehavior

External veiw of Basilica at Vezelay

Monk giving us a history lesson.

View down the hill from the Basilica

Lunch Menu
Déjeuner
Poulet Franc-Comtois
Chicken with Comté cheese topping

Salde de pommes de terre au cerfeuil
Potato salad with chervil

Salade de champignons
Mushroom salad

Salade de concombres au tandoori
Cucumber salad with Indian spices

Salade et plateau de fromages
Salad and cheese platter

Coffee

Bourgogne Aligoté
Merlot

Barge Day 3

Itinerary

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Litote departs
Enjoy your morning cruise
12:30 Lunch
14:30 Excursion to the wine region of Chablis where the famous vineyards
grow on the hills surrounding the town. A visit of the picturesque
town of Chablis itself will be followed by a wine tasting in a private
cellar in the nearby village of Bersan St. Bris
Return to the Litote
19:30 Dinner on board

Today was much warmer first thing in the morning. Breakfast was from
8:00 to 9:30am but the barge started down the canal at 9:00am so some
people were still eating with the barge moving. We again had a mix of
people running, walking or biking along the tow path while the barge
moved leisurely down the canal. Others enjoyed reading, taking pictures
or other leisure activities on the barge. One of the locks was unique in that
just before the lock the canal went over a river on a bridge carrying water.
The aqueduct was the same width as the lock and so it looked like a very long
lock. Another of the locks was unusual in that it was about a foot wider than
all the other locks. Most of the locks are standardized and our barge is designed
to just fit in the lock and under the bridges. In addition the roof on the barge
is curved so it could go through a 6Km tunnel when the barge was originally
used to transport grain from the wheat fields of southern France to Paris when
the boat was built in 1929. When trains took over that function in the 50s the
barge was converted to be used as a passenger boat.

We had a great lunch of Quiche Loraine, salads, and chocolate mousse. A little
After 2:00pm while were going through a lock, we exited the barge and got
on the bus for our excursion to Chablis. The barge continued going downstream
to Brienon where we joined it after the excursion. We first went to a hill overlooking
the town of Chablis and saw the various areas that produce different levels of the
chardonnay grape in the Chablis region. We then went to a little town nearby
that used to be a quarry town and had cellars underneath most of the town from
digging rock.. They then switched to growing grapes and used the cellars for
storing and making wine. We tasted several of the local products and then
headed back to the Litote in Brienon. It was still light so several of us got bikes
out and rode around town to see if there was an internet café. No luck.
Hopefully tomorrow.
Kws

The dinner menu was:

Diner

Soufflé au fromage
Cheese soufflé

Boeuf Bourguignon, tagliatelle
Beef Bourguignon with tagliatelle pasta

Plateau de fromages, salade
Cheese platter & salad

Pain perdu, coulis de framboises et abricots
Bred pudding with raspberry and apricot sauces

Café au bar
Coffee at the bar

Chablis
Cahors

Activity at a lock

If you look closely you can see the canal is in a bridge over a river!

Out of time will add more pictures soon!
kws