Boating holiday in Burgundy, France!

Two years after going on the Canal du Midi cruise, my family decided to rent another boat, but this time we opted for going to Burgundy (Bourgogne), which would be slightly closer to Austria, where we live, compared to the Midi. We again booked our holiday with H2O Holidays, with boats from the Crown Blue Line. Once again we invited my brother Will, who lives in New York City to come along and for the second person we chose my sister Susie, who is now living in Madrid, Spain. Will came from NYC, while my sister would fly to Lyon. As Will was flying to Geneva, we agreed to get together in Switzerland and that we would pick Susie up from a train station near our port of departure.

Instead of going through Italy and France, like we did on our last boat trip, this time we drove along Austria and then crossed over to Switzerland. We had agreed to meet Will in a hotel and he actually arrived before us! We had dinner together that first evening and then early the next morning we went to pick up our boat, as well as my sister from the train station. This time we had rented a bigger boat and it was more comfortable than the last one. My husband and I had one cabin, Susie shared another with Gisela, while Will and Christopher had one together too.

The boat sure looked nice and elegant and we noticed that it even had cute blue curtains on the windows now. The first part of the cruise went past canals, much like the Midi did, but later on we had to cross over to a bigger river, which was a new experience for us! Locks were much bigger than what we were used to and in some locks passengers even had to wear life jackets to go through!

The maximum speed limit continued being 8 kph, so the ride was just as relaxing as the Midi had been, but we seemed to be going past bigger towns than the last time. We continued having our famous breakfasts every morning, except that this time I brought a few of my home made jams for everybody to try. I had problems with one I wanted to take to Madrid a while before, as the security in the airport took it away, so we were glad to have driven this time instead of flying!

We had our special French dinners every evening and my son took the opportunity to try both escargots and frogs legs for the first time in his life! We kept running into ducks and even swans all the time and we fed them whenever we had any stale bread with us.

When we were returning with the boat one evening, my son bumped into the boat ahead of us and there was some damage done to the outside wooden stairs. We told the owner about it, but he said not to worry about it. Later on we ran into him again on our way to the restaurant, so we invited him for dinner and we had a lovely time together with him. Apparently John lived alone on the boat and he was used to going from one canal to another visiting his many friends.

This time we also seemed to have done much more walking compared to last time and we even got a case of champagne to take back home, even though they are not allowed to call it that way!

Once again I would recommend a river boat trip to any family with teenagers, groups of friends or people who want to complete some project together, like writers, for example.