Paris and the Loire Valley: Day 5 - Heading to Our Boat

Before I go any further I have to compliment Adele on her excellent French! She's speaking to everyone and getting all the info we need! Also, so many people have gone out of their way to be kind and helpful. People have helped us head in the right direction when we get lost or confused, people have offered to carry our bags. For the most part, very nice people, the French! Now for today....

We all got up early (5:30 for me) because we needed to pack everything up and meet a taxi at 6:30. We were doing great, outside when the taxi showed up but we have three very large bags and they couldn't fit in his trunk cause he had a 6 pack of iced tea back there that he refused to move. He also wouldn't let us put a bag on the seat between us. So, we had to call for another Uber, which came immediately and had plenty of room. We got to the train station with about a half hour to spare. We got yucky coffees and croissants and ate these quickly before it was time to board. The train was comfortable and had a little table in front of us for work or anything else. We were on that train for about 90 minutes, then we changed to another train, also comfy, and then we had a bus. No one knew where the bus stop was. We asked several folks and no one knew. Then a van pulled up and it turned out this was our bus. (And at least one person who "had no idea" was also on this bus). Half hour later we were at the Le Boat base.

On the train!

The "bus"

It took a long, long time to go through all the stuff we needed to know (and there were two other groups there). We were starving. We had planned to take a cab into the town to go food shopping, but it got too late. I was told that there was a lovely restaurant one kilometer (about 2/3 of a mile) away. I went there only to find that they had a group of 24 people and couldn't feed anyone else, even take out. I was pretty distraught. I asked if they had bread, and they kindly sold me some baguettes, a salami and waters. I was thrilled to be getting something to eat! Back at the boat they were going over stuff to be sure we knew what we needed to know.

The LeBoat base

The "living room"

The Galley

One of the cabins (there are two like this)

Another cabin (two like this). The two beds can be pushed together.

The little restaurant where I got bread, salami and water.

Soon after we shoved off and were in our first lock. Adele caught on quickly as we went through about 8 locks this afternoon.

Cows.....All the cows we've seen here have been white.

Opening a bridge

Cruising

First lock of the day!

First lock ever for Adele

Making friends (and below)

Low bridge

We finally stopped for the night at Clamecy. We really wanted to plug into electric, but it was too far from our boat. A lovely French man, Yves, actually moved his boat forward so we could move up and reach the electric outlets. He helped us tie up and get settled. Then we headed out for groceries and dinner. We scoped out three restaurants. One was closed, two of them said they were fully booked (not sure if that was the truth) and we ended up in a fantastic Moroccan restaurant. Then we went to the supermarket, which they said was open till 9, but turned out only to be open till 8, so we only had a few minutes to get everything we needed. I also bought a bottle of bourban for Yves cause he was so nice and mentioned he liked it. Back to our boat to finally unpack!