Barge Date:  05-27-2019

Auxonne, Brussels, Atlanta, Thomasville, and St. Petersburg

We made it to Auxonne. After the last lock on the Rhone au Rhin we turned north on the Saone to travel up river to the port.  We needed to pass through one lock and for the first time we used a new, for us at least, way to call for the lock.  In other canals you might find a rope over the canal to pull to open the lock.  On this river you twist a rubber hose. It doesn't seem  possible to twist a flexible hose enough to move a switch, but it worked, nonetheless.

At first glance, Auxonne is somewhat of a disappointment.  A good number of closed commercial stores downtown. We were hoping for a lively restaurant market.  Would have liked the food stores to be closer. The newly minted young lady at the tourist office gave us some advice which was mostly wrong.  She'll learn. But we will get by.

Purchased fast train tickets online with some difficulty, but we will know better next time. To get home we are going through Brussels to visit the family. Then on to Atlanta and Tallahassee.

We had a treat from our number one host in Brussels.  We were taken to an abbey that still has a beer product, albeit it is made off the property by a commercial concern.  They also are still involved in cheese making but just the aging of it, otherwise it too is made off site in France. We had a wonderful tour arranged just for us with a gentleman that taught history for 40 years at the abbey school and who now in retirement marshals three other guides. We heard a lot of details that might not be offered to the typical tour group.  A lot of history about symbolism in church history. This abbey has a very large library as it received many books from other abbeys that have closed.  The library is not open to the general public. One problem the abbey has is not enough monks. The youngest is 40 but the median age is something north of 60.

Sisters

In Atlanta we meet up with daughter #1 who is coming to Thomasville as part of the graduation party that will travel on to St. Petersburg for the big event.  Good planning would have had all of us on the same plane to Tallahassee but we missed the boat. So she arrived an hour after us.

Graduation went well.  Started at 8AM to beat the heat. The event was outdoors at Eckerd College under a big tent.  The big girl will now be off to China to live and work for at least 15 months.

As I write this blog we are just a day away from returning to France.  Stay tuned.