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