Stats 'n Stuff

We've had a few days now to start getting accustomed to our new environment, and so far we are happy with how things have turned out for us with respect to our winter mooring. While we had been looking forward to being in Toul, we are finding the Port-Cergy and its environs to have some very nice advantages.

The image below shows why it became impossible for us to get to Toul this year. It's a "status of the waterways" document for the northeast sector of France that is published weekly by the vnf. Green would mean no restrictions, yellow means navigable with some special conditions, orange means navigable with some restrictions (such as reduced water depth), and red means closed to navigation. Toul is situated at about the middle of the map at the junction of the various canals.

When we were in Belgium in early July, we intended to cruise down the Canal de la Meuse (which is the waterway in the upper left quadrant in this map).  Unfortunately, the southern section of that canal had already turned "red" by the time we approached Namur, Belgium. That is why we headed down the Sambre (not shown on this map), with the possibility that we could then get to the Canal de la Marne au Rhin Ouest (the "horizontal" red line at the left/middle of the chart) and approach Toul from the west. Unfortunately, the "dominoes" of canal closures kept falling throughout July, which effectively blocked all our possible routes into Toul. 

All of our possible routes--whether from north, west, or south--closed to
navigation due to drought. The still-open "orange" routes to the east of Toul were
not available to us because they would require us to get on German 
waterways that neither we nor the boat are certified to use

Our current temporary home, Port-Cergy, is directly off the Oise River. A village existed in this area for centuries--Cergy has a 12th-century church and some other old buildings in the center of the village--that in the 1960s was integrated, along with fourteen other communes (analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities) into the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise. Several other "new towns" were created at the time as a mechanism to control and balance the fast development of Paris and its suburbs. The marina and its surrounding restaurants and housing were built in the early 1990's. The presence of several restaurants around the port makes for a lively atmosphere most days of the week, especially in the evenings.

C.A.R.I.B. III in its home for the winter. It was rather tight quarters
maneuvering into the slip, but between Lon's great driving and assistance
on lines from the port captain and dock neighbors, it was a low-drama event

The port entry as viewed from a bridge just downstream of the port. We spent our first couple of
days on the pontoon/dock at the center of the photo. Easier to dock there, but subject to lots of 
wake from passing boats (and the commercial barges did not slow down to the posted 6 kph)

Cergy's 12th century Eglise Saint Cristophe

A little bit of "old" Cergy along the Rue nationale

Within just a few minutes' walk are a bakery, pharmacy, hair salon, small grocery store, and several restaurants. The commercial center with its large stores is a few miles away and most easily reached by car, but we should be able to cycle there as well. Steve and Rosie, a wonderful Australian couple who have kept their 23-meter barge here for several years, introduced themselves to us early on, and we have enjoyed getting to know them over the past few days. Antoine, the French port captain, speaks English (yay!) and has been very helpful.

One of the big advantages of being here is that we are considered to be in the outer suburbs of Paris, and a 15–20-minute walk gets us to a train station from where, for 5 euro and a 40-minute ride, we can be in the center of Paris. With the excuse of "checking it out" in preparation for an upcoming trip to the UK, we went into Paris for the day on Wednesday, August 31.

First stop: breakfast. When we are in St. Petersburg we love going out for breakfast, especially on Saturday mornings. However, bacon, eggs, French toast, and bottomless cups of coffee just aren't a "thing" in France (or in the Netherlands, for that matter), so we go through some withdrawal when we are here. In 2019 we discovered that Paris had a diner called "Breakfast in America." We enjoyed a breakfast in one of its two locations then, and, happy to see that it had survived the Covid lockdowns, we made BIA our first stop of the day.

The BIA location in the Marais neighborhood was small, but busy,
inside and out 

Lon gets his French toast. From the look on his face, I'm not
sure if he's bemused, suspicious, in shock that he finally
has French toast again after all these months, impatient
 to eat--or none of the above

Breakfast gave us the energy needed for the walking that followed. Just down the street from the restaurant was the Eglise Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, a "new" church built by the Jesuits in the early 1600's on the orders of King Louis XIII. It has architectural importance as the first church in Paris to say "no" to Gothic and "yes" to the Baroque style. The church was closed during the French Revolution and briefly served as a storehouse and a temple to the Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being before it returned to Catholicism in 1802 under Napoleon.

The interior of the church, with the ornate touches
typical of Baroque architecture

The first plaque I'd seen which commemorates deaths during
the Revolution, in this case, those of 5 priests of the church who were killed
in 1792 during what was called the September Massacres

Our walk then took us to the Port de l'Arsenal, a city marina just off the Seine near the Place de la Bastille. During the months of June, July, and August--when the full-time residents of the marina are out-and-about cruising--it becomes possible for a transient boater to reserve a slip for a period of a week or weeks and become a "temporary Parisian." We've known several boaters who have done this and enjoyed it immensely. It has some appeal to us as well, so we thought we'd stop by and talk to the staff in the marina office. If we're going to do it, 2023 seems like a good year because (1) we're currently so close to Paris that cruising options that include an extended stop in Paris shouldn't be too difficult to develop and (2) the Summer Olympics are going to be in Paris in 2024, which would likely make staying at The Arsenal that year an impossibility. Bottom line: it's not cheap, but we're definitely interested and will give it some serious thought.

The "July Column" in the Place de la Bastille, which has nothing
to do with the French Revolution, but commemorates a "July Revolution"
of 1830

A view of the basin of The Arsenal, with a tour boat about to enter the covered Saint Martin canal. The port lies between the Seine and the Saint Martin canal

A "small world moment" for us was spotting this barge in the Arsenal.
 In 2019, a barge named Maria was docked just in front of us at Port Royal in 
Auxonne, France, and was in the process of being sold by her American
owners to a British couple. We stopped by this boat to talk to the people aboard
and it was, indeed, the same Maria and her "new" British owners 

Afterwards, we simply wandered through familiar neighborhoods to see what, if any, changes three years had brought. 

The iconic glass pyramid leading to the entrance to the Louvre Museum.
It's just past summer vacation season, so while there was a line at the entrance,
it wasn't nearly as long as we've seen in some of our past visits to Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral is still swathed in scaffold

Our first glimpse of 2024 Summer Olympics memorabilia

The Palais-Royal, a former royal palace. Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, it was built for
Cardinal Richelieu (a high-level politician as well as a church official) in the 1630's. The striped columns in the Courtyard of Honor are a modern artistic addition. We only passed by quickly, and 
apparently there's a lot to see here, so we need to spend more time on our next day in Paris

For the past few years, I've had my photo taken in this same location. 
What's new are the grey, stacked construction office trailers behind
Notre Dame. Despite the scaffold, it's still iconic Paris: Notre Dame Cathedral
and a tour boat on the Seine

We completed our walk at the Gare du Nord, the train station where we will board the Eurostar to travel to London tomorrow (September 5). We then timed our return to the boat so that we know how early we need to get up to catch the 10:13 a.m. Eurostar.

OK, so much for "stuff", now for some "stats." 

Our cruising route in 2022: we started in Maasbracht, NL (at the bottom of the loop at the top of
the map). What followed was the Netherlands loop, the cruise through Belgium and into France, the 
"side trip" to the Somme (the "tail" on the left side of the map above the main waterway route),
 and our finish in Cergy (bottom left)

Number of days start to finish: 76

Number of days spent cruising: 47

Distance travelled: 920 km (552 miles)

Engine hours: 169

Locks: 138

Mobile bridges: 18

We will be in the UK from September 5th to the 15th: two nights in Bath visiting friends Kitty and Stan, seven in Cornwall/Devon, and one in London. We're hoping that a UK railway strike announced for the 15th doesn't affect our return to Paris from London on the Eurostar that day-or at least doesn't affect it much. Our remaining time (2-1/2 weeks) in France after our return from the UK is flexible, so a delay of a day or two in getting back would not be the end of the world.