Making "Sens" of Things

We had company on July 2 at our "wild" mooring (a quay, but no bollards or rings, so Lon had to drive mooring stakes for our lines) in Montereau-fault-Yonne. The lovely folks on the barge Csavargo, also members of the barge association we belong to, are, like us, headed to the rally in Auxerre. We first met them (briefly) last year in Compiegne, then re-introduced ourselves when they ended up in the Arsenal in Paris for a couple of days. We met again several days later at the mooring in Moret-sur-Loing. Over docktails on July 2 we realized that our cruising schedules would align on July 3 and 4, so we cruised in tandem on those days.

Our July 3 cruise to Pont-sur-Yonne included a rainy morning.
It's been a while since I've needed the heavy-duty rain gear.
Here we are sharing a lock with Csavargo.

The first three locks on the Yonne were a challenge, as all the lock walls were sloping sides and there were no floating pontoons to make tying to the bollards, and the ride up in the lock, any easier. Fortunately, the vnf staff were prepared to grab our lines to assist us in getting tied to the bollards at the top of the lock wall; it was then up to us to figure out how to ride the rising water in the locks without scraping our hull too much on the lock walls. Fortunately, all of the subsequent Yonne locks either had at least one straight side or had floating pontoons to moor to. When a floating pontoon was the option, there was usually only one, so in those cases Csavargo would tie up to the pontoon and we would tie up to the side of Csavargo. Never a dull moment!

Our stop for that day was the small town of Pont-sur-Yonne (literally, "bridge on the Yonne"). The town had two nice mooring pontoons across the street from a boules (a game similar to bocce) court. A quick stroll through this medieval town revealed the requisite collection of historic monuments (one of the oldest gothic churches in France, remnants of the old town fortifications, timbered houses), but not a whole lot was going on except for a few boules games. Janos and Rachel and Lon and I played a quick game of boules, retired to the back of CARIB for docktails, then called it an evening.

View up the Yonne from Pont-sur-Yonne. The photo was taken from the "new" bridge; the 
structure about center photo contains the remnant arches of the old 17th C stone bridge, which had to be replaced because the small arches were a hazard to river traffic.

The July 4 cruise to the city of Sens was relatively short, but not without its moments of excitement.

We didn't encounter much commercial traffic on the Yonne, so it
was truly "Murphy's Law" that we would encounter this big boy
on the narrowest part of the waterway, a diversion canal that
had taken us off the Yonne for a few kilometers. We were stopped
against the side of the canal to allow the barge to pass us.

Sens is another city whose roots go back to Roman times, and was a prestigious religious center in the Middle Ages. St. Stephen's Cathedral (in French, Saint-Etienne) in Sens was the first of the great Gothic cathedrals, dating from around 1135, and was built on the foundations of an earlier church. It was the model for other famous Gothic cathedrals, such as those at Chartres, Amiens, and Canterbury (in England). The importance of Sens diminished after Paris was elevated to an archdiocese in 1622. 

The exterior of the cathedral. With only one tower, it seemed
a little "lopsided" to me, but the north tower was removed
during renovations in the mid-1800's and not replaced.

The interior of the cathedral. Not as soaring as some cathedrals,
but as it was the first cathedral of its kind, it was left to the
builders of future cathedrals to reach for higher heights.

As in the church in Meaux, the resident stone saints surrounding
the exterior door have "lost their heads".

The Cathedral was the location where Louis IX (later St. Louis) was married to Marguerite de Provence in 1234. It's also the burial site of the Dauphin, son of Louis XV and father of Louis XVI. He died before his father, and thus never became king. He was one of the few French royals not to be buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris, although his heart is buried there.

The monument for the Dauphin and his wife.

The former Archbishop's Palace, the age of its various
wings ranging from the 13th C to the 18th C.

The central town retains much of its medieval character, with narrow streets and timbered houses throughout.

The central square of Sens, the late 19th century covered market at the center of the photo.
An Italian restaurant on the square (the building near center photo with red coloring) made
for a lovely location for dinner with other boaters on the evening of July 4. No fireworks, though,
for American Independence Day.

The Grande Rue of Sens.

St. Maurice Church on the banks of the Yonne opposite
the city center. It was built during the latter part of the 
12th C, reworked in the 16th and 17th centuries, 
and served those who worked as fishermen and bargemen.

The fabulously ornate Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) from 1904.

These 13th C walls and tower incorporate at their base the
only remaining bits of the 3rd century Roman walls that
used to encircle the town.

Abraham's House was built in the 16th C for a tanner.
Its corner post bears the intricately carved "Jesse's Tree", 
representing the Virgin and eight kings of Israel.

We're not always museum afficionados--most times we enjoy just doing walking tours around a town--but we were really impressed with the Sens Museum. Spread over four levels in the former Archbishop's Palace, it lays out the culture and heritage of Sens from: Prehistoric and Celtic artifacts; the Roman period of the first through third centuries; paintings and sculpture from the past 500 years; and last--but definitely not least--items from the Cathedral treasury. The latter is one of the richest treasury collections displayed in France.

The oldest of the archeological finds from the region.

Pat in the lower level, with some of the Roman displays. 
Several Roman mosaics were reconstructed on the floor.
 To the right is a reconstructed facade of the Roman public baths,
 with original pieces placed in the appropriate locations within
 the new plaster "wall".

Lon and one of the beautiful Roman mosaics.

The interior architecture of the museum was nearly as
interesting as the displays. Lon is taking a brief break in
the lower level among its Roman artifacts.

A large part of the Roman displays was dedicated to
a collection of Roman family tomb monuments.

The Jardin de l'Orangerie was once the archbishop's
private garden. This is the view from a window in
one of the upper floor galleries of the Palace/Museum.

18th C sculptures in the former ceremonial gallery of the
archbishops.

Lon in one of the rooms with the displays from the Cathedral's
treasury. 

A few of the treasures from the treasury: (top) a carved ivory
reliquary casket from the 12th C; (lower left) The Coronation
of the Virgin, a 15th C tapestry; (lower right) the vestments
that belonged to the 12th C Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas
Becket. Becket's disagreements with King Henry II led to his
self-exile to Sens from 1164 to 1170. When he was restored to
the position of Archbishop and returned to England, he was
murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four knights of Henry II.
Whether the murder was ordered by Henry
 remains an open question.

Next year we will be traveling back through this area and will definitely be stopping again at Sens. One day, and a partial, was not nearly enough time to see everything we wanted to see.

Our mooring in Sens. We're just to the left of the center and behind us are the barges
of others headed to Auxerre.

Conspicuous Consumption

One of the reasons that we stayed for two nights in Melun--besides stretching out our cruise time so that we don't arrive in Auxerre too early--was to be able to visit the Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte just a few kilometers outside of Melun. The chateau was the creation of three artisans of the mid-1600's engaged by Nicolas Fouquet, the superintendent of finances to Louis XIV.

The original property owned by Fouquet had a small chateau; however, Monsieur Fouquet had grand ambitions and extravagant taste. When all was said and done, three villages had been purchased and destroyed to obtain enough land for the enlarged chateau and gardens. Built between 1658 and 1661, it is one of the largest castles in France and became an inspiration for the Palace of Versailles. Unfortunately for Fouquet, he didn't have much time to enjoy what had been created for him. He had hoped to impress Louis XIV with the grandeur--in fact, part of the chateau was constructed with rooms specifically for the king--but a too-lavish celebration to honor the King on August 17, 1661, and court intrigues led by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, convinced Louis that the home was constructed with misappropriated public funds. Fouquet was replaced in his position by Colbert, who later had Fouquet arrested for embezzlement as well as treason. 

Fouquet's subsequent trial dragged on for nearly three years. Found guilty of embezzlement, the presiding judges voted for banishment rather than death, but Louis XIV used his pardoning power to change the sentence to life imprisonment. This was the only time in French history a Monarch used his pardoning power to worsen a sentence. Fouquet died in Pignerol prison in the Alps in 1680.

 

The front of the chateau. It barely escaped destruction during
the French Revolution, but managed to remain intact until
 cooler heads prevailed in the late-1790's. It is currently the
largest private estate listed as a Historical Monument in France.

View of the back of the chateau, with a portion of the gardens.

Standing at the bottom of the back steps, with the sweep of the
center lawn/formal gardens behind us. The woodsy areas to each
side are also part of the estate.

View from the 2nd floor balcony in one wing of the chateau,
overlooking the front lawn and the stables.

If it's Louis XIV era decorating--and especially if designed to
impress the king himself--you know that paintings and gold 
are going to be everywhere.

The dining room.

The king's bedroom.

The rooms are decorated with authentic 17th C
furnishings, as though Nicolas Fouquet and
his family were living there. 

Decorated panels on the shutters of
an interior window.

After visiting Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, we felt better about not visiting the Palace of Versailles when we were in Paris. There were considerably less visitors than we would have encountered in Versailles. We did have to deal with several tour groups of schoolchildren, but thankfully, they only created a bottleneck at the end of our tour inside the chateau.

The weather has continued to stay dry and not too hot, so our cruising days have been very pleasant. The Seine continues to be green, quiet, and a world away from the riots that have been occurring in cities and towns in France the past few days.

There are stretches with absolutely stunning houses.

 

Most of the locks on the Seine have had two chambers, so we have
rarely had to wait for a lock passage and at the most we've shared a
lock with another pleasure boat. However, the small chamber of 
Lock 2 was under construction, so we had a small delay while 
waiting to share the lock with another pleasure barge and this 
commercial barge that pulled in next to us.

For our stop on Friday we turned onto the Canal de Loing for about 1 kilometer to reach the halte nautique in the town of Moret-sur-Loing. For several centuries in the Middle Ages it was a fortified royal town, and while most of the ramparts are long gone, it has retained two of its Medieval entry gates, its church, the keep of the 12th C. castle (where Nicolas Fouquet was locked up after his arrest, under the watchful eye of Musketeer d'Artagnan), and in its town center, the typical narrow and winding streets of a Medieval town. Moret-sur-Loing was also the home of Alfred Sisley, a well-known impressionist painter.

The Gate of Burgundy, the east gate into the town. The old
timbered building to the right of the gate housed a restaurant
with delicious crepes.

View of Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativite church
(12th-13th C) as seen through a portal of one of the old
 mills on the Loing River.

Looking down the main street of Moret-sur-Loing from the
Burgundy Gate toward the Samois Gate, the western entry
into the old town.

The Graciot Mill on the Loing River, formerly used in the
tanning process, now an arts center.

The church's Renaissance organ, among the
oldest in France.

The Francis I facade, dating from 1527, was originally located
on the main street of Moret-sur-Loing. In the 1800's it was
purchased by a cavalry colonel who dismantled it and moved it
to Paris so that it could become the facade of a townhouse for
his mistress. It was purchased by the town of Moret-sur-Loing and
returned to the town in 1955, where it was rebuilt in the 
courtyard of the town hall.

The skyline of the town from the Pre de Pins park on the banks of the Loing. Sisley painted 
several canvases from vantage points in the park (as well as elsewhere in the town).

Today we continued cruising, completing our time on the Seine River and starting up the Yonne River, the last waterway on our way to Auxerre. We didn't spend any time exploring our overnight stop in Montereau-fault-Yonne, not because it wouldn't have been worthwhile, but the mooring quay wasn't in the optimum location for us to do so without expending more energy than we wanted to. Hopefully, we will be able to correct that next spring, when we anticipate returning this way during the 2024 cruising season. 

Moving On

We took it pretty easy during our last few days in Paris--neighborhood strolls, a movie, evening get-togethers with boating friends, a little shopping, and some final preparations for departing the Arsenal on June 27. 

Wandering the streets of Ile Saint-Louis (the smaller of the two islands
in the Seine that comprised the heart of the old city), we were astounded
by how many buildings had plaques denoting past owners and/or
residents: for example, the photo in the lower right was that of a residence
of the Nobel prize winning physicists Marie and Pierre Curie.

The House of the Doves on Rue de la Colombe, the site of a 
medieval legend about the rescue of two doves from the ruins of
a collapsed building who became symbols of marital devotion--and  
where a patient French bulldog (at left) waits for its owner to exit
the wine bar that now inhabits the ground floor. 

Covered flower market on the Ile de la Cite.

Grass and glass--the Accor Arena, a popular concert and sports
 venue near the Paris Bercy train station.

                                           

Our New Zealand boating friends from last year, Margaret
 and John, cruised into the Arsenal on Sunday, June 25,
 and we were able to have a catch up/farewell dinner on 
Monday evening.

It took until Sunday for us to get back to the National Archives and actually go into the building. There were more people around than when Mecki and I had visited a few days earlier (the surrounding streets were packed with people shopping and strolling on a warm weekend day), but it's not one of those items on the "must see/must do" lists of most tourists, so once we got off of the shopping streets we weren't fighting crowds.

The Museum of the National Archives is housed in the Hotel (Mansion) de Soubise, an 18th century building built on the site--and incorporating remnants--of two previous mansions, the original from the late 14th century and its 16th century successor. It was the residence of the family of the Prince of Soubise until it was seized during the French Revolution and sold. In1808 it was acquired by the government of France and assigned by Napoleon to the National Archives. To house an ever-increasing number of records, several record repositories were added to the site during the 19th century. 

The museum allows for a visit of the living quarters of the Prince and Princess Soubise, where several of the rooms are used for temporary exhibitions and for the display of facsimiles of some of the important and interesting archival materials (such as the last letter of Marie Antoinette). When we were there, the special exhibition was on the French Revolution.

After several rounds of renovations over the centuries, 
the turreted tower is the only remaining piece of
the original 14th century medieval building.

The Princess' Ceremonial Room. The furniture and the wall
coverings are authentic; the ladder and plant material were part 
of a contemporary artistic installation.

The grand staircase.

From 695, a declaration on land ownership
from King Childebert II.

All good things must come to an end, hopefully to make way for other good things. It was hard to believe how quickly our 3 weeks in Paris passed, but there we were on Tuesday, June 27, leaving the lock of the Arsenal and heading upstream on the Seine.

It doesn't seem that long ago that we were making the turn
into the lock.

The first section that we travelled on the river was very urbanized and not exactly scenic. But as we continued on during that first day of cruising--and certainly on the second--it was much greener and quite attractive. Each lock has two chambers, big and bigger, to accommodate commercial barges that can range up to 110 meters in length. There aren't a lot of moorings for pleasure craft along this stretch of waterway, so on the first day of cruising we moored on the upstream quay of the lock at the town of Evry. 

Evry is a spread-out, and in many ways commercialized,
exurban area of Paris, but we did find a 12th century
church in the old village center.

The Seine has many residential barges along its banks.

This was one of the odder locks we entered. One side was sloped
(to accommodate wide boats) and one side had cylindrical
metal supports with gaps between the cylinders. Very strange.
The Seine locks are definitely designed for large commercial
boats, not for smaller pleasure craft.

The second day of cruising (Wednesday, June 28) brought us to the town of Melun, where we were able to find space on a rather long quay that is used in part by pleasure craft and in part by commercial boats (tour-type boats rather than cargo haulers). Melun is only about 25 miles from Paris, although thanks to the curves in the river we cruised about 40 miles during our first two days. It's definitely a historic area, with origins going back at least to Roman times, but many of the stops on the walking tour talk about what used to exist on a particular site, not what currently remains. Castles, mills, religious buildings, fortifications--either completely gone or only minor vestiges remain.

Melun has some pretty parks on the island and
along the different arms of the Seine split by the island.

No signs were seen that declared Melun a "flower city",
 but given the number of blooms on the bridges, they
certainly should be able to make the claim.

The remains of Saint-Sauveur Priory. Established originally in
the 10th century, the vestiges here date from the 12th century.
Most of what existed in the priory's heyday disappeared
 during the French Revolution when it was sold as National
 Property and divided into workshops, shops, private homes, etc.

The "Melun Dodo" is a bit of environmental art, created from
recycled materials.

The 12th century Notre-Dame collegiate church. 

A prison is situated on the eastern end of the island, immediately
adjacent to the Notre-Dame church. For nearly 4 decades in the 
early 19th century the church was enclosed within the prison walls,
finally being "freed" in 1850.

We're in Melun for 2 nights and have had the good fortune to be moored behind a barge that we recognized from our time at the DBA rally in Auxerre in 2017. We've enjoyed socializing with owners Alex and Louise. We also took advantage of better-than-expected weather today to visit a chateau in the vicinity that was an inspiration for the chateau at Versailles. But as it's getting late, the details of that visit will have to wait for another day.