We both woke beside ourselves. Obviously!
Carla and Dan arrive tonight. The first worry was wether the car would turn up. At 8.45 on the button, I spied a low loader turn into the marina car park with an Avis Citroen c4 on the back. I jumped ashore and strolled round only to see the low loader drive off back over the bridge. Panic. I whistle and start running after it. It's quicker than me and is soon out of sight. What the?
Round the corner he is off loading the car in a lay bye. Silly me!
We set off for versoul to do a supermarket big shop to make the most of the car. We have just 250kms to use so it's a bit tight. We visit leclercs and buy a second matching relaxer chair. They have gone up by 8€ but still a bargain in this skippers eyes. We load up with booze and I want to get a fish crab but the crew persuade me out of it based on the searing heat and late night return this evening.
The shopping takes a couple of hours, the Leclerc is the size of a small airport. Staggering!
The journey to Dijon takes an hour and a half. Seems strange seeing France at this speed and my passenger keeps seat shifting and annoyingly sucking in breath as she is convinced I am going to hit the pavement again and again. Of course it never happens.
Dijon is big! The tram system will end up in the centre is my logic and so I follow it in. We pick up signs for centre ville but only when we are there a sign for gare. The signage is usual French hit and miss and awful to follow unless you know exactly where you are going anyway, but despite this we find ourselves at the station and parked in the multi story.
We check out the arrivals and have 6 hours to wait for the babies. (28 and 29 but there we are) we head off to check out Dijon. More we walked, more we appreciated this place warrants a few days at least. We are so pleased that we will be back in a couple of weeks. For now it's a familiarisation walk with leffe stops. I reckon on being allowed 1 leffe and 3 small beers if I drink them early giving me plenty of time before I drive. That's still less than two pints. The early part of the walk is thus dedicated to finding very nice little establishments in glorious squares and people watching. The latter to admire architecture, visit tourist office and drift down tiny lanes full of interesting shops. The shopping here is immense even if it, is not my thang. I omitted to take the camera so will report with pictures on this fantastic city when we visit there in the boat.
We settled down at a cracking little pizza resto at about 8pm and we were both now getting very excited about the imminent arrivals. Lovely Pizza in super square next to an old converted church, now a theatre.
The guys would be hungry so at closing time I ordered a pizza to go and we walked the 10minutes to the gare. Their platform was dominated by a monster long train. The 10.22 overnighter from Paris calling at Verona, Milan, Turin and Venice eventually. Every coach was a sleeper and it made me realise how small Europe was and how easy travel here was. The train pulled out at 10.29 the Paris Dijon train pulled in 1 minute later. I spotted dan immediately and there carriage pulled up just 20m away. We had told them a taxi was picking them up. He got off the train and looked straight at me. Clearly not expecting to see me he looked the other way. Carla got off and they oth looked towards us again. It dawned! Massive smiles and hugs and a few tears from mother and daughter. Lovely.
They were pretty exhausted and delighted with the pizza. We got straight in the car and headed back to the boat. I stopped to top up fuel in port sur soane. It cost me 14€ bargain.
We got the guys aboard and after drinks got them settled into bed at around 1 am. The festival karaoke night was not even enough to keep any of us awake for long.
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