Adieu to C.A.R.I.B. III

We had time in the interim between David and Diane's visit and our final departure from Toul to finally visit the village of Villey-Saint-Etienne. It sits on a bluff high above the Moselle River, about 10 km from Toul. Every time we'd been past it, whether on C.A.R.I.B. III or by train or by bike, we'd seen its ancient-looking towers rising above the trees and would promise ourselves to visit it. September 10 was the day to take to the bicycles and keep that promise.

The Villey site has been occupied since the Bronze Age, but its primary development came in the Middle Ages with the construction of the church of Saint Martin and its defensive bell tower. It's a cute, clean little place, not too far from the village of Liverdun and most likely a bedroom community for the larger cities of Nancy and Toul.

The view from Villey-Saint-Etienne to the Moselle.

Left: What went up must come down. Upper Right: The garden of the local fortified house.
Lower Right: The fortified house, built in the late Middle Ages to control the valley.

We wanted to make a trip to Paris before leaving France but hadn't quite figured out when to do it until Lon's oldest brother Nick and his wife Wendy presented us with the perfect opportunity. They booked a bus tour through Normandy with arrival in Paris on September 12 and wondered if there was a possibility of meeting up with us in Paris before their tour actually started. When they first brought it up to us earlier in the summer, we couldn't be sure if it would work into the schedule of what was happening with the boat sale. By the end of August, however, we were happy to be able to confirm that we could meet them on September 12 for lunch, then we would spend the rest of the day and night in central Paris before returning to Toul on September 13. 

We booked a hotel very near to the Paris Gare de l'Est station, then took the metro out to their hotel on the fringes of the 17th arrondissement. 

Nick and Wendy look amazingly wide awake for having
flown all night from Minnesota. We really enjoyed the visit.

As our time in Paris would be short, the "one new thing" to do while we were there also had to be a rather abbreviated experience. For that, we decided to take an hour to wander through the Banksy Museum, within easy walking distance from our hotel. Banksy is a British street artist who has never been definitively identified. He came to notice in the 1990's with a distinctive style of stenciled graffiti that appeared in many cities throughout the world and used dark humor to make political and social commentary.

Upper left: Israeli-Palestinian conflict conducted via pillow fight.
Upper right: A senior citizen sneezes and loses her dentures.
Lower left: Self-explanatory?
Lower right: Rats were front and center in a number of Banksy's works.

We kept our neighborhood walks within the 9th and 10th arrondissements, so there were no glimpses of the Eiffel Tower or similar landmarks during this trip.

Upper left: Crossing the Saint Martin Canal.
Upper right: Saint-Laurent Church, a composite building with parts from the 12th C to the present.
Lower left: The "Angel Bear" in front of the Gare du Nord station; symbolizing the plight
of the polar bear and the disappearance of habitat under global warming.
Lower center: Another perspective on the Saint Martin Canal.
Lower Right: The historic Follies Bergere music hall and performing arts theater.

We were back in Toul before we knew it and then had two full days to complete our final cleaning and packing. We took the train to Nancy on the 15th to pick up a rental car to make transporting our luggage to the Airbnb apartment in Nancy easier. Dinner that evening was at one of our local Toul favorites, La Fiesta, with boating friends from the shipyard. 

All cleaned up and windows covered for winter.

On September 16 it was time to say "adieu" to the boat and the lifestyle that we've vastly enjoyed over the past several years. (Quick French lesson: Au revoir is the usual form of goodbye in French for standard everyday, temporary goodbyes, where one expects or hopes to see a person--or thing--again. Adieu is reserved for permanent, final farewells, such as the end of a major chapter in life. Adieu is definitely appropriate for this situation.) It wasn't a particularly sad event, probably because it didn't seem quite real. Because the sale wasn't closed yet we could have stayed aboard until we left for Florida, but I'd had my fill of the boatyard. I was really looking forward to a relaxed stay in Nancy and the chance to explore more of a city that we had been impressed with on our previous, shorter visits.