Péniche Haute Seine - View from the Inside

If you enjoy the idea of slow, immersive travel, a barge cruise on one of Europe’s canals will certainly tick all the boxes. In August last year, I embarked on Péniche Haute Seine - a barge cruise between Paris and Burgundy on board the Péniche Raymonde. 

A great start to the cruise was the sailing through Paris and watching the quick transition from city to countryside, leaving behind the bigger vessels and entering quiet waterways. I was amazed by how scenic the cruising was and I would have been happy just staying on board the boat for the 6 nights - especially considering the fantastic food and wines on board!

We really enjoyed Vaux-le-Vicomte Chateau, a precursor to Versailles that does rival it in opulence, albeit on a smaller scale!

We equally enjoyed wandering around the artist’s village of Barbizon where we saw many inspiring paintings.

Having visited St. Helena earlier in 2019, I’ve developed a great interest in Napoleon (next year is 200 years since his death on the island), so I was happy to discover many connections with Napoleon on the cruise. We loved our visit to Fontainebleau chateau with its lavish furnishings, as well as discovering its fascinating history. It also now houses a major Napoleon museum which we made a quick visit to, with many mementoes and treasures from his life and travels.

Next on our journey, we moored in Montereau, the site of Napoleon’s last victory (before Waterloo), which has a small museum where we were the only visitors.

Cruising further south to Sens was even more scenic. We used the onboard bikes to cycle on a flat path along the Yonne, played Boules with the crew and other passengers, tried our hand at French scrabble and even found time to listen to the climax of the 3rd Ashes Test and the heroics of Stokes and Leach, courtesy of our tour manager, Pippa!

The Thomas Becket window at Sens and a great wine tasting experience in Joigny rounded off a wonderful week. 

Join us on Péniche Haute Seine or one of our other Barge Cruises.