Wednesday 16 September 2015

Back on Board - at last!

Tuesday 15 September

No pictures unfortunately - I will eventually find the camera.

Emirates flight from Durban to Dubai was horrible; surly staff, rubbish food, agonisingly slow service - it took them two and a half hours to offer us any refreshments at all. Not even a drop of water post take-off. The next morning's flight from Dubai to Paris was like flying with KLM; happy personnel, great food, snappy service - an absolute pleasure.

The train ride from Charles De Gaulle to Brussels departed 25 minutes late which meant we missed the early connection to Diksmuide but the journey itself was very pleasant - and, at 300kmh, fast. The train from Brussels to Diksmuide took two hours, stopping at a host of small stations but our taxi was at the station to meet us and finally, at about 22h00, we were back aboard 'Elle'.

Since then it has been a rain and wind filled flurry of unpacking, shopping, cleaning three months accumulated deck grime, filling water tanks, shopping, milking cash dispensers, shopping...I think you get the drift?

As an aside, on arrival there was a very pretty visitors card stuck to our window saying that  Australians Ian and Lisette from the barge 'Catharina Elisabeth' (http://eurmacs.com/blog/) had popped around and were moored a short way from us. Needless to say, that evening we got together on Elle and had a fun evening, swopping stories and imbibing the odd glass of wine or two amply washed down with some great Lynn-made soup. Nice to finally meet you Ian and Lisette!

Tomorrow we leave for Nieuwpoort and hopefully our Kokwatersport order will have arrived - dispatched 11 September and not here yet.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful night, and we're looking forward to many more. We forgot (!) to compliment Lynn on the delicious soup. We don't have much idea what was in it, but are really keen to know. An especially great accomplishment considering it was her first day on board! Can you get some info?

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  2. Thanks Ian, I will ask Lynn to send you some soup details.

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