The Golden Odyssey - A Cruise Diary
Gent to Paris
We arrived in Gent late yesterday afternoon after a lengthy absence and three prolonged voyages. As I mentioned, we were chartered by an Australian family for a two week cruise from Gent to Paris. He is a retired businessman who wanted to do something special for his family and his seventieth birthday, so arranged to charter the Golden Odyssey and sent his two daughters first class tickets from Aussie. Mom and Dad, the two daughters, one husband, and a truly delightful eight year old girl composed the party. They were of diverse interests, the young couple specialists in antique maps and documents, museum framing and gilding, and he is a very accomplished classical guitar player, so furnished us with a background of hauntingly beautiful music. The other daughter is a film maker, and recorded the trip. The cruise was idyllic, the foliage spectacular, and the weather ranging from warm to occasional chill, but a cosy fire was usually the accompaniment to drinks and dinner.
The Saint Quentin canal was entirely new to us, and, though forewarned, we were unprepared for its beauty and tranquillity. Some pleasant cultural surprises, as well: the old city of Lille, and its outstanding restaurants, joyous nightlife, and great shopping; the charming city of Cambrai and the beautiful museum of fine arts at Douai; discovering the birthplace of Villon de Honnecourt, a medieval architect, engineer, and inventor. All along the trip were traces of the inland marine life which once abounded in the waterway systems, with Café de la Marine still in faded lettering on the nineteenth century buildings at various locks.
The passage through a six kilometre tunnel was a never to be forgotten experience. Especially as it was begun in the eighteenth century and inaugurated by Napoleon in 1815. We were towed through by an electric tugboat, whose propulsion is via a chain laying on the tunnel bottom. It passes over a cogwheel on the tug, whose power comes from overhead wires, like a trolley. The trip takes about two hours, and we played Beethoven (his Pastoral) as well as choral pieces such as Carmina Burana and Lohengrin. The wedding march happened to come up just as we exited the tunnel into daylight. Wonderful.
After leaving the Saint Quentin Canal, we passed into familiar territory on the Oise River, and cruised down this lovely valley, stopping at quiet country moorings as well as historic places such as Chantilly and Compeigne (where Joan d'Arcy was finally taken through betrayal, shot from her horse outside the city gates). Down the river we cruised, finally coming to the junction (conflans, in French) with the Seine. A night in Conflans St. Honorine, a well known bargeman's town at this confluence, where even the chapel is on a barge, and the fleet is blessed each year, and then morning found us off to Paris. The Seine is wonderfully clean, after a massive twenty year effort by the French government, and one can see trout a metre down under some of the bridges. Meandering as it does through areas whose names evoke memories of French literature and history: St. Germaine, Neuilly sur Seine, Bois de Bologne, and passing by hundreds of the famous Paris houseboats, it is a leisurely build-up to the moment when around the corner one comes face to face with the inimitable needle of the Tour d'Eiffel above the treeline. Out with the champagne to celebrate our entrance into the city of light and the finale to a superb two week cruise. Tantalizingly closer it comes, sometimes disappearing altogether, then, suddenly, in the fading golden light of afternoon it looms above the Allee des Cygnes, with the original model of the Statue of Liberty holding up her torch (recently gilded) from the southern tip of the island as if to point to this dominating piece of the Paris skyline. Half an hour more and we were moored a few hundred metres from the base of the twinkling tower.
A lavish dinner, cognac in the hot tub as the lights flicker up and down the tower above us and the bateaux mouches charge by with their tourists or dinner crowd, then into Paris for some night life.
Next morning, though it was the day of departure, we decided to serve our guests a portion of Paris with breakfast, so we turned it into brunch, served it on deck, and had a three hour cruise in sparkling sunlight under a blue, blue sky along the left bank, around the Isle de Cite, Isle Saint Louis, and down the right bank to return to our mooring. It was a bit of an emotional goodbye, for much is shared on a cruise of two weeks, especially when it is a new adventure for all aboard. Our guests stayed in Paris for another week, so we saw them several times afterward, memorably for an excellent dinner at a small restaurant discovered by one of them on the Isle Saint Louis.
We then had a week in Paris to prepare the yacht for our next charter from Paris going North, and had a wonderful meal at Le Dome. But that is another story, as is the return voyage.
