France 2011 - Weeks 3 & 4

Dear Family and Friends

OK, so here’s the scoop. Have you heard of a book called ‘40,000,000 Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong’? Well, I ’m here to tell you “Oh yes, they can!!!” And if you have the time, I’ll tell you why.

Firstly they don’t know how to spell.
As an example, I was in the épicerie looking for rice. I asked the clerk in my very best French – “Ou est le riz?” – which I assumed was pronounced reezz. She looked at me very strangely so I used the universal language of pantomime.  In my best Charade mode I measured out a cup of reezz, added 2 cups of water, put the pot on the stove, put the reezz in the bowl and cleverly whipped out my chopsticks and began eating from my reezz bowl.  Understanding dawned as she exclaimed “Ah, ree!” Ree???  Seriously, why do the French put letters  - like a perfectly good zed - at the end of a word if they don’t want you to use them?????

This .............                                                                                         

                                                                                 becomes this!

Secondly, what do they have against working for a full day – morning to evening?
Why do they take 2 hours off in the middle of the day just when I’m ready to go shopping. Zut alors! Very frustrating. And God forbid that they should actually show up for work on Mondays. That would be grounds for another strike for sure. So if we actually want to cook on the boat Sunday and Monday, we have to fill the fridge on Saturday but only between the hours of 9 to 12 and 2 to 6.

Spring has sprung – the cygnets are here!

Thirdly – and the most frustrating – why do they advertise services that they don’t actually provide?
Prime example. On Monday, 23^rd of May we set off from our very lovely mooring in La Ferté sous Jouarre. Great village, fabulous market on the Sunday morning, good shops. We enjoyed it so much we stayed for 2 days. The day was beautiful – sunny, bright blue sky and warm. After a very short cruise – about 12kms – we arrived at Saint Jean les Deux Jumeaux. Gorgeous little village with a brand new dock which advertised water and electricity. Oops, no electricity and no water. No problem we’ll go another 25kms to Meaux – that’s a very large town with full services. Which may have been true if you were arriving on the 26^th of May and not the 23^rd. The  marina was actually closed so obviously no electricity! We saw a notice on the board that the town council were trying to decide how to charge boaters for electricity. It obviously made perfect sense to them not to continue providing any at all until they sorted out the problem (Maybe a nightly moorage charge like other marinas? Far too complicated for these guys!). We decided to moor for one night anyway and risk a ticket. Let’s see them try to collect that fee!

Oh well! It’s our anniversary let’s go out to supper. Rats! It’s Monday. The only thing open was an Italian restaurant (presumably because Italians aren’t French) which wasn’t Edmonton’s Royal Pizza by any means but what the heck. We were in France – how bad can it be?

Our fall back meal – they make lovely omelettes!

The other bugbear that’s obviously not their fault but can be slightly annoying is to pull up to a beautiful little village expecting to walk into the main street to have lunch and finding that the village has absolutely no stores or shops other than a boulangerie – a baguette might be heavenly but when you are hungry and there’s no filling, it lacks a certain je ne sais croix! I guess the French economy isn’t doing well as there are just hundreds of closed small, owner-run businesses. The French economy is probably running on the union-led state employees.

Sadly, you can fire a canon ball down the main street of this little village.

Now that I’ve taken the mickey out of Frenchmen and have risked offending Francophiles everywhere, I must also admit that we’ve met wonderful people who have been very helpful. The Capitaine and his lovely assistant here in Nogent couldn’t be more accommodating and are quite tolerant of our efforts to communicate in French. We do quite well most of the time but there are still occasions requiring vocabulary that we don’t yet have.

And before you get the idea that it’s all bad, be assured we are still having a wonderful time. Cruising down the Marne was just beautiful!! Lovely wide open river, very very little traffic, and gorgeous scenery. We must be ahead of the summer boaters as we hardly meet anyone on the water. We have gone days without meeting another boat. When we were in La Ferté sous Juarre, there were 4 boats! I was ready to organize a cruising convention! One Australian, one Dutchman (very grumpy), one German and the Canadians – us!!

La Ferté used to be the world’s largest supplier of millstones

Tiny villages all along the Marne and miles of vineyards on the hillsides

We also moored up in Epernay for three days. Both Epernay and Reims (pronounced Rance – like dance – see what I mean??) are in the heart of the Champagne country. All along the river were miles and miles of vineyards. Quite spectacular, although the lack of rain must be worrying for the growers. We took a tour of a champagne house – La Castellane – and found it fascinating. There are 6 kms of underground caves, special lighting so as not to affect the wine. Workers drive through the tunnels on little forklifts to get from one end to the other as they transport either filled bottles ready for storage or supplies to make and bottle the wine. We had a tasting at the end of the tour and we purchased a bottle which was supposed to have been for our anniversary but we’ll wait for another time to open it! The brut was too dry, the demi-sec was too sweet so like Goldilocks we bought a rosé.

La Castellane Champagne House – I climbed up the tower. Phil was too hung over!!!

The weather (until today the 26^th) has been just beautiful. We are currently mooring at Nogent-sur-Marne - just 12kms outside Paris. Because we kept finding marinas with no facilities (despite what was advertised) we cruised for fewer days than planned. We wanted to go to Paris but when we phoned for reservations, the port at Arsenal – which is at the foot of the Bastille – was full. Thankfully we had made reservations for the planned date of arrival, the 31^st of May, so we’ll be there for 4 days while we pick up my aunt and uncle who are coming for a visit. We can hardly wait – our first visitors!

Nogent calls itself ‘Paris l’Est’ with firm grounds for so doing. The buildings and architecture remind me so much of Paris. It is truly beautiful and for once the marina is full service – even has laundry machines as well as WIFI – which of course they pronounce weefee. I have taken a ton of pictures of houses and apartments. Truly lovely. We are a good hike straight up a hill into the town centre so there’s a health benefit as well!

Beautiful Nogent-sur-Marne

We have been on the water for almost a month and with only a few hiccups have enjoyed it immensely. Phil has really improved his driving and parking skills and I have yet to fall into the water. My rope skills are much improved and in a brief moment of euphoria I actually considered learning how to dock the boat. Thankfully it was a brief moment. Let’s not jinx anything now. We’ve spent time really organizing the boat and getting rid of stuff we’ll never use. Our favourite pastime is to put something out beside the garbage can and watch to see who comes along to take their new found treasure home. We can hardly wait to continue the journey!

Much love to all – The Captain and Mrs. Roper

France - first 2 weeks!

Salut à tous

Nous avons arriver au France! And the adventure continues.... 

We arrived in Charleville Mézierès in good time to pick up a few groceries as the next day was May 1^st – France’s version of Labour Day where everything is closed tighter than a drum. We grabbed a cab and were driven to the boatyard. So far so good. Oops – Sharlene you idiot, you left your purse in the taxi!!! Not only did it have both passports, my credit cards and all our Euro dollars but we failed to notice the name of the cab company. Merde, merde, merde!!!! The young lady in the boatyard office began calling all the cabs in the yellow pages and luckily we made contact with our taxi driver and he quickly returned with my purse. A 30 euro cab fare became a 50 euro fare, but merçi beaucoup, I had my purse back. As you can imagine Phil now watches me like a hawk – it’s going to be a long summer!

More bad news – for whatever reason (as I had emailed Cedric with the date of our arrival), Calypso was not in the water and as mentioned nothing will happen now until after the May 1^st holiday. More merde! That means I have to climb a 6 foot ladder to get on and off the boat which isn’t too bad in and of itself but it means no toilet or shower! Seriously sucks! Tinkling in a bucket in the middle of the night is hardly glamorous but necessary. No way was I going down that ladder when half asleep.

We stayed in Pont à Bar for several days getting unpacked, organized and cleaning the boat after the winter storage. A British couple, Fergie and Audrey Hewer, whom we had met last year were there and very kindly drove us around to the shops so we could re-provision. By the Thursday we were ready to set off – finally we were to get underway. Well almost.... Phil had noticed that the bow thruster wasn’t working very well and I said that the toilet wasn’t flushing as well as it did last year. Phil and Cedric looked the boat over and discovered that one of the batteries was quite low. Cedric drove into Sedan to get a new one, quickly installed it and we left in glorious sunshine – surely a good sign!

 Almost in the water!

We had the canal to ourselves, if you didn’t count the herons and a million song birds serenading us as we cruised along at a wicked (NOT) 6 km per hour. We made it to Le Chesne our stop for the night. We got to bed early to prepare for a busy day ahead – a series of 27 locks that drops us over 300 metres over about 10 kms. We did really well helped along by the fact that we were going downstream so each lock we entered was already set and all we had to do was drive in, set the ropes, pull the activation pole and hang on as the water emptied from the lock. Seriously, we now have this nailed!! 

 Leaving Pont a Bar

 And we're off - down the Canal des Ardennes

Our first tunnel of 2011

Merde encore! In between lock 18 and 19 the engine alarm began to scream in a very urgent high pitch. Phil quickly shut the motor off and began looking for the cause. All systems looked normal. Afraid to do serious damage to the motor if we started it up again, we called Cedric and he said he’d be there about 5:00PM.  He and a helper showed up, checked all the usual suspects and found nothing. His best guess was that a plastic bag may have been caught in the water intake which is vital for cooling the engine (Jeez, you’d almost think I knew what I was talking about!) and that once we’d stopped the bag probably dropped off into the canal again. Have I told you how dirty the canals are? They are a minefield of floating rubbish - not at all like the clean canals of Holland. It was now too late to continue the next 10 locks in the series so we stayed put until the next morning.

 Le Chesne at sunset

We continued on our way and arrived in Rethel on Saturday where we stayed for 2 nights to recuperate from all the excitement! There were 2 other British couples – Colin and Linda, Chris and Paula who live on beautiful barges – so we had some lovely company and splurged by going out to dinner twice. The first was planned, the second occurred as a result of drinking too much wine before supper and not being sober enough to cook! We were sorry to leave such nice company. But we have a schedule and as Jamie says – “gotta make time!” 

The next 2 days went really well if you don’t include finding no place to eat lunch at the 2 villages we stopped at and the fact that a miserable sodding barge (we hates barges we do) drove us up onto the rocky sides of the canal and left a big scratch down the side of the boat. Merde is my new favourite word! Poor little Calypso – more paint to be added to her other bruises. After that adventure Phil and I decided that we would stop being so ‘Canadian’ (aka nice) and not give them so much room from now on. We’ll take our allotted space and to hell with them – they can move over. The canals may be narrow in spots but if everyone is considerate there is enough room for 2 boats to pass regardless of their size.

We are now in Reims for 3 nights – it is a lovely city with some great buildings. It was once as important a city as Paris and the cathedral of Saint Rémi is outstanding. The stained glass windows are superb including one designed by Marc Chagall.

It's all about the food!

Phil and I both got haircuts, the laundry is done and the larder is full. We are ready to head to Paris but not before going through a 2 kilometre (!!!!) tunnel. More adventures likely to follow!

Much love to all – Captain Phil and the Ropemanperson

London

Hello to All  

The 2011 Coss Cruise has started off with a bang – several in fact! But let’s start at the beginning.

The flight to London was fine – Air Transat was better than we expected. Leg room was good but the seats were a little narrow.  Definitely an incentive to lose some weight over the summer (any excuse is good – pick one of several!) We arrived so early in the morning we had to amuse ourselves while waiting to get into the self-catering flat. A good old fashioned English breakfast did the trick. We took the Gatwick Express (an aboveground train) to Victoria Station and checked the bags so that we could wander around. At £8 a bag (X 4) it was almost cheaper to rent a room for the day. Oh well – nobody said travel was cheap. 

The first thing we did was head off to the Visit Britain office to pick up our pre-ordered London Passes. It got us into a great variety of sites ‘free’. While there we also purchased a London Oyster travel card which gave us access to tubes, buses and trains in Zones 1 and 2. What a great time saver that was – no hunting around for change every time you get on a bus or the tube.  We wandered some more in the Westminster area noting all the preparations for the Big Event – miles of cables for the media littered the streets.

 Just a sample of the many temporary studios

Looks like a good place for a kiss!

It was time to catch a cab to 29 Berkeley Street – our home for the week. It might have been that I was tired, jet lagged or just plain grumpy but my initial reaction to the flat was not good. Once again, Sharlene, beware of pictures on the internet. However we`ve booked several places using the same agency prior to this and had really enjoyed our Cotswold cottage, Italian villa etc. Maybe my expectations for a £100 a night accommodation in central London were a little ambitious but the quality of furnishings was not up to Coss standards – which let`s face it - aren`t that high!! 

The flat however was in a very central location, 2 blocks from Marble Arch and in an interesting Lebanese/Middle Eastern neighbourhood. The smells emanating from the shops as we walked by were tantalizing and we made sure we got at least one meal while we were there. Phil had the mixed grill and I had lamb chops followed by baklava – scrumptious. There was also a pub right across the street which became our ‘local’. We got to know the girls there several of whom were from former Russian controlled countries. Now that they are independent countries and part of the EU they can travel fairly freely to go to school or work for short periods. 

 Our "local"

The second day was mostly spent scouting the neighbourhood, picking up essentials for breakfasts and some suppers as we usually eat lunch out.  The next day we headed out – I finally got to the Tate Britain after our 4^th visit to London. We did the Victoria and Albert again for a special exhibition of Romantic Period art called Beauty. The Churchill War Rooms were very interesting and I loved St Paul’s which I hadn’t visited before  - even made it to the Whispering Gallery some 300 feet up. My vertigo doesn’t allow me to look down but I was glad I climbed those 500 steps!!!! 

Sadly I felt a cold coming on and by Thursday it was full blown so I thought I’d better stick close to home to try and head it off. We did walk over to Hyde Park to scout out our location for the next day’s big event – the Royal Wedding. We also had to cancel meeting Jeff and Jessie’s brand new baby daughter but they certainly didn’t need a visitor who was sick. The Coss luck reared its ugly head again and by the time I woke up on Friday, I couldn’t breathe and was too sick to move. So there I was –on the couch in my pyjamas watching the wedding on a little 17” TV screen, not even HD. Grrr. All that expense for nada. Our Canadian flags stayed in our bags, but heh – maybe I can pull them out for France’s Bastille Day. Let’s see – a Canadian flag on France’s most patriotic day  - what do you think - a hanging or guillotine offense?

Nevertheless, roll with the punches Cosses – get ready for the next part of the adventure as we board the EuroStar to cross through the chunnel to Paris, grab a local train to Charleville Mézierès and a cab to Pont à Bar where Calypso awaits our return!!!

Love to all – the Adventurous but Unlucky Cosses