When we lived in the US, a favorite annual vacation was a week-long cruise in the Caribbean. For one upfront price we could include our accommodation, meals, and drinks. It was possible to add in the cost of excursions in advance as well, but at ports of call we preferred to walk around the harbor or simply stay onboard. After all, we’d already paid for food and beverages and with most of the other passengers out for the day, it felt as if we had the ship to ourselves. After moving to France we discovered canal cruising that was similar to what we had experienced in the Caribbean except instead of being with thousands of other travelers, we shared the floating hotel with only 20 others. When an email announcement of sailing through the “heart of Burgundy, its wines and regional flavors” arrived, it caught our attention.

Continue reading “Do-it-yourself land cruise: the inspiration”

Whenever we vacation in a new part of the country, we always book accommodations in a central location in the area that we’re going to explore. That way it’s easy to make day trips to the surrounding destinations and still be back “home” in time for an apéro and dinner. Staying near the train station has at least 2 advantages: you don’t have far to go to catch your train for your day out and the station is often close to or in downtown near the sites you want to see in your base city. A third advantage in Poitiers, at least, is that the station is multimodal; that is, you can catch a train, a long distance bus, or the city bus, all in the same location. For this trip that was important because 2 of the towns we were going to visit are served only by motorcoach. More on those starting next week but first we wanted to discover the “City of a Hundred Steeples”.

Continue reading “Poitiers as home base”