Barge Day 6
Thursday October 17th
Itinerary
Villeneuve sur Yonne à Sens
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Litote departs
Enjoy your morning cruise
12:30 Lunch
After lunch free time to walk/shop in Sens
16:30 Guided walking tour of Sens city center and the cathedral
followed by free time to explore the shops and
cafes. (Meet Neil outside the cathedral at 4:30pm)
20:00 Farewell Gala dinner on board
Today we woke to cloudy skies and cool temperatures. It had rained during the night but wasn’t raining at 8:00am. Many of us walked or ran before breakfast since we didn’t get as much exercise yesterday as we had been used to. We started cruising at 9ish and are heading to Sens, our final stop. We found out that on Friday we
will have breakfast early and be on the bus by 8:30am. Neil said that if we were to leave 30 minutes later, it would take an hour and half longer to get back to Paris, since so many people in Paris head to the country for the weekend. We arrived at Sens just in time for lunch on the barge. After lunch we had free time to shop and
explore the town of Sens. The close by cyber café’s computers were not working so we continued to look around the town and try to find internet connectivity. We then tried an Internet terminal that was in La Post (their post office) but they had it set up to not accept cookies and so yahoo connectivity didn’t work at all. I tried using a
phone in the Best Western hotel near La Post, but had no luck. I could dial the number with the phone but got no dial tone on my computer. Gary Carroll eventually found a computer game store that had 8 Internet terminals that some people were able to use. The keyboard on the computer at La Post and in the game store had a very
strange layout of characters so that about half of the keys were in the wrong place for a person used to touch-typing on a US keyboard. It made it very difficult to do anything. I finally found another hotel and was able to dial the 800
number for Earthlink France and emailed days 4 and 5 journal entries and a picture from each day. By then it was time to go to the cathedral for the guided tour. We gathered at 4:30 but the guide didn’t show up until about 5:15.
He was very knowledgeable, but gave us almost too much detail about the history of the cathedral. I had not realized how important the town of Sens was from a religious perspective. Once again we saw vivid evidence of the impact on the cathedral of the French Revolution and the War of Religion. Most statues that were reachable had their heads knocked off. One statue that still had it’s head was because someone had put a hat worn by many revolutionaries on it and it was spared.
After the tour, I went back to the hotel and got online again and updated the web site with text and some pictures. At that point I needed to get back to the barge to dress for our gala final dinner. Normally the 20 of us ate at 5 separated tables that seated 4 people. For our last dinner, Loraine and Neil from the crew joined us
and they put all the tables together in a row at an angle in the eating area, so we all were seated at one very long table for 22 people. Once again Horvé (the chef) outdid himself with a wonderful meal of duck and all the trimmings. Loraine (the manager) introduced the crew again and they repeated that we were their favorite
passengers for the past week. They had been taking Polaroid pictures and putting them in a book that captured some of the events of the week. They asked us to write in the book and around the pictures with our impressions of the week. Most previous groups only had 3 or 4 pictures, but we had 12. At the end of the meal, Neil asked
each of us to take some of the flower petals that decorated the table and take them to the sun deck (amidships) and make a wish and throw the flowers overboard. It was a very moving and symbolic way to end the journey.
We told the crew to all come and visit us in Colorado (or California) when they get a chance. It was sad to have the week nearly over, but we all had a really good time and really enjoyed the time with each other and with the crew. The crew found out today that their last trip of the season will start on Saturday and then they are all off for 4 months until the barge season starts again next March. We all go back home at various times over the next few days and some people are going to Morocco. We head back to Paris tomorrow at 8:30am!
Just before start of last day of crusing at
Villeneuve sur Yonne
Hackneys before the gala dinner
After the flower toss
Lunch Menu
Déjeuner
Saumon en croûte de pesto
Salmon in a pesto crust
Salade de tomates au mozzarella
Tomato and mozzarella salad
Salade de betteraves rouges à la moutarde de Meaux
Beetroot salad with Meaux mustard dressing
Salade de pâtes aux ecrevisses
Pasta and crayfish salad
Plateau de fromages, salade
Cheese platter, salad
Coffee
Côtes d’Auxerre
Anjou