June 16-19 Auxerre

Friday June 16 Evening

We took an evening train from Paris to Auxerre, arriving in time to make a quick grocery run and make the bed. Before we had opened the door on Juniper Bill and Sandy (Anahita), from Australia, were introducing themselves and giving us the keys to the boat. The marina had handed the keys off to them in case we didn't have a set when we arrived. Before we finished talking with them, Rob was down introducing himself - we had met on the Dutch Barge Association website as we're both hoping to transit Le Canal de Bourgogne this season.

After getting our gear aboard, we had time to pick up coffee and cream for breakfast (to be accompanied by croissants to be purchased fresh in the morning) and then grab a hamburger from the food truck in the marina parking lot.

At last it was time to sit on the upper deck and enjoy watching the evening progress while enjoying a G&T. We spent quite a bit of time learning to use our phone cameras shooting in low light conditions as darkness fell.

One of the many photos we took of St Etienne Cathedral

Saturday June 17th

Time to finish moving aboard as we have guests arriving on Monday. Went to turn on the water in the galley and the faucet handle broke into several pieces. No problem, we'll run to the local Mr Brico store and buy a new one. Oooops our faucets predate the EU and are on an English built boat. Maybe you could bring in the faucet and we'll rebuild it with a valve stem that has the new European standard. Bike back to Juniper and crawl under the sink to remove the faucet (several colorful words were heard coming from beneath the sink). Got it out and rode back to Mr Brico. The valve was so corroded together there was no way to get it apart. Time for a new faucet. After a couple more trips back and forth, we finally had all the parts and the system back together and no leaks. 

The old

And the new