There are over 40,000 chateaux in France!! 300 alone in the Loire valley (our route is the Upper Loire). Amazing. We visit two private chateaux regularly. The Chateau de la Bussiere, with its amazing gardens. The Countess de Chasseval still lives there and if you’re lucky you’ll meet her while wandering around the garden. I have never seen so many fruits, vegetables, fruit trees, flowers in a place like this. It’s truly wonderful. There are apple trees that are hundreds of years old and giant quince trees, raspberries the size of golf balls, enormous squash varieties, huge chrysanthemums……it goes on and on. (Think I’ll do a blog just on La Bussiere….).Our other regular visit is St. Fargeau. This is incredible and remarkable that it is still standing. Thanks to the current owner it still exists. He lives in the chateau in an apartment and we get to visit part of his private quarters. The most incredible part of the visit is in the attic. We walk the entire circumference of the chateau in the attic.

There are 450 AOC designations of wines. (Appellation d’Origine Controlee). For a wine to be awarded AOC status it must be produced within the boundaries of that particular designation i.e. Chablis, Cote de Beaune, Sancerre etc. and must be produced to the standards dictated by the AOC board. There are over 50 varieties of grapes grown in France. Some wines are made from only one variety -more common in the north and others are made from blends. The famous Chateuneuf-du-Pape wine can have as many as 13 varieties blended….

There are 365 different cheese -one for every day of the year!!! Cheese, like wines, can be AOC. There are currently 42 French cheeses with AOC status. The most popular cheese in France is Comte, the second most popular is Roquefort. Roquefort was the first cheese to be granted an AOC. There are many stories about cheeses. One of my favorites is about Valencay cheese. It is said that it was originally shaped like a pyramid but on his return from the disastrous campaign in Egypt, Napoleon stopped at the castle of Valencay and saw the cheese which reminded him of Egypt. In a rage he drew his sword and chopped off the top of the cheese!!!! So to this day it is in the shape of a flat-topped pyramid!

There are about 35,000 boulangeries (bakeries)!!! And about 3.7 million tons of bread are consumed each year. We definitely help on board Meanderer. We try to find different breads and pastries every day. It’s not hard!

And then there’s the Poppy….the red poppy, not the other one!! They are found all over France and are one of the most beautiful “wild” flowers. They are cultivated in certain areas but can only be grown in a wild method -in other words they must be allowed to grow in natural meadows with no disturbance or fertilizer. On the one hand they are a delicate plant, affected by farming methods but on the other hand, if left to grow naturally they are amazing with the root lasting up to 25 years and in the course of time producing up to 50,000 blooms. The blooms last one day but appear to last longer because the plant produces a new bloom every day. The fields of poppies in Flanders are known worldwide and the poppy has become a symbol of remembrance of wartime. In our more local area, Nemours is famous for its poppies. There is a fantastic chocolatier – Des Lis Chocolat -and they have been making chocolate flavored with poppies as well as other bonbons, jams and liquers, also made from poppies. We can do visits there for a demonstration and tasting! Yum, yum…

I’ll see what additional UBI’s I can find as we cruise along……….

The weather has been so changeable here. The first two weeks of the season were beautiful -warm, sunny and perfect for cruising. Last week started in a very different vein! And of course we had guests on board who are avid walkers and love to enjoy the outdoors….it was cold and windy and dull for the first three days. They bravely got off the boat every day to go on excursions and walk — wrapped in every piece of clothing they could handle. Gosh, it was cold. As I always say -we can control many things but not the weather! In spite of it all though we had fun with them and the end of the week was warm enough for them to eat lunch on deck or enjoy evening cocktails outside or sit and watch the beautiful French countryside go by as we cruised.

The northern route is an interesting week. The canal is wider and deeper than our usual route because of the proximity to the Seine and Paris and therefore commercial traffic. The countryside is equally beautiful and there are some interesting towns and villages that we visited. Samois-sur-Seine where Django Rheinhardt lived, Moret-sur-Loing where Alfred Sisley lived and many other impressionist school painters came to paint, Chateau Landon where there have been people living since the 4th century…….the list goes on.
The market in Chateau Landon is sweet -not very big but some good things nonetheless.

Samois-sur-Seine is simply gorgeous. there is a house that must be one of the most photographed at this time of the year. it has one of the largest, oldest wisteria vines that I’ve ever seen.

And of course there’s Django…

In Ferrieres-en-Gatinais we got to go inside the bell tower of one of the churches. Fascinating and amazing when you realize that it was built in the 12th century and they did not have heavy lifting machinery to get all those huge wooden pillars and beams up there. The roof inside many of these churches resembles an upturned boat hull — because the workers built boats and used the same techniques!! Very cool…

Now we have a little break and we have time to do a few small things on Meanderer. Always something that can be done. It will keep us busy until our next guests arrive……..

Ah yes, the joys of owning a boat begin again…..That and the fact that the water pump on the bow-thruster seems to have stopped, we are off to a flying start in the repairs department!!! Nothing major though and all will be fixed and operational before our first cruise. Tiresome though.

Clearly it’s spring, whatever today’s weather may be telling us. When we arrived back almost two weeks ago the hedgerows were sad and brown. Thanks to the warm weather and nice sprinkles of rain they are already showing that green haze of leaves budding. The forsythia is in full bloom glowing yellow, and the cherry blossom and apple trees are starting to bloom creating little splashes of color in the mostly still dormant trees. Hard to feel too down with the weather when you see those.

Funny how things strike you sometimes…..in New York we are woken or disturbed by sirens, cars honking, just general cacophony. here we are woken or disturbed by farm tractors driving by or the sounds of sheep in neighbors back yards or cocks crowing!! Funny really how different our two lives are….And both have so much to offer.

We’ve been welcomed back by our friends here. I can tell you that it is all happening in Rogny. We are apparently getting a second bakery in September (you have to remember that this is a Village of 650 people!), a new epicerie is supposed to open and possibly two pizzerias!!!!!!! Wow! Actually, if the pizza is good in either one it will be a nice thing to have in the town. George and I often go to a fantastic restaurant — La Petite Metairie — where we can get really fantastic pizza. It is truly “au milieu de nulle part” (in the middle of nowhere) -a destination spot. They serve other dishes too but the pizza is so good we never eat anything else! When we’ve taken friends there it’s clear that they all wonder where we are going -I mean there is NOTHING else in sight, yet here is this fantastic little restaurant -with an Arizona theme – how funny is that?
We’ll be ramping up our preparations in the next week – first cruise in two weeks. I’ve been busy unpacking new sheets and towels, ordering new bath products, chair cushions — the list goes on. in general making sure that we maintain the standards for which Meanderer is known.

Happy Easter to all. Watch this space…..

As always we have very interesting guests on board. Last season we had a stone mason with us. You can imagine how much he enjoyed all the stonework in the old buildings that are everywhere on our route. The special visit highlight for him was Guedelon. This is a remarkable project being funded by Michel Guyot, who owns the Chateau of St. Fargeau (one of our most popular excursions). He has a passion for “old stones”. He decided that it would be a great project to build a Chateau-fort using the same tolls and methods as would have been used in the 13th Century. The project began in 1997 and is expected to take 25 years to complete!!!!!!! It’s a fabulous visit though. When we told some of the stone-masons at the site that our guest was a kindred spirit he was invited to try his hand at using the tools to shape a huge piece of stone. He has left his mark on this project. It was a special moment for him – -and us. Not only is the actual structure amazing to see but there are lots of animals there too — you know I’m always happy about that! There were some wonderful huge pigs wallowing in mud -they looked so happy.

The Tour de France came through our region with a finish in St. Fargeau. George and I went with friends to watch a piece of the race about 4 kilometers from the finish. Amazing!!! The entire peloton came through at breakneck speed — about 60 mph and you have no idea how close they all are -scary! Blink and you miss them. George kept telling me to look at the camera but I wanted to look for the riders –Armstrong, Contador, Cavendish…… Such fun. Even with the camera on rapid fire it was still tough to get photos! The locals go nuts for the race and get to a watch point hours before the race to watch all the sponsor vehicles and team cars come through. They throw out all kinds of stuff to the crowds — bit like Mardi Gras but it’s water bottles, caps, bags etc. This year we have two stages that we can watch and one is coming right through our home village of Rogny. We have a group coming on board Meanderer who are avid cyclists so they will have a lot of fun watching.