Colombiers
Happiness is: A 2-Euro shower, an open air marché; a nearby boulangerie; an even closer cave. Not necessarily in that order - probably the reverse. Columbiers provided all of these and more and was yet another of the pleasant stops along the canal.
What's around the bend?	Our mooring at Columbiers	Supper fixin's	Ready to eat
We arrived at Columbiers sufficiently early to take advantage of all of the above. Despite the drawback of a solid grounding on the approach (no-one seemed to be watching or care less, so that was OK), and the high cost of diesel at the huge bumper boat marina, we were more than happy to find the marina would allow us to use their showers - for a small charge, of course. Annie and I were getting close to the end of our stay at this point, and so contact with our airline (see below ++) was in order. We had purchased a 7.50 Euro phone card earlier in our trip and had used it extensively. There was still plenty of time left on it to enable us to call the Canadian office of Zoom, who confirmed our Paris-Toronto flight was still OK. An open market and temporary canal-side restaurant were going full swing, as well as a wine and food sale happening in an ancient wine cave. Wine sampling was in order and free, so we freely partook and then bought a bottle or three of wines produced by small local vintners. The cave was cool inside, with huge doors and massive storage barrels towering over the sample tables. We enjoyed chatting with the local folk while we complimented them on their products. Dinner as usual in the cockpit contained some of the local delicacies collected from the market stalls, as well as more of the local wine. It's a hard life, this cruising. ++ Zoom airlines: well, I have long been a proponent of scheduled airlines, avoiding the charter operators ever since a dramatic loss of cabin pressure in a cranky old DC8 over Paris in 1990, that saw us nose dive from 35,000 feet to 9,000 seemingly over a lifetime, but in reality a couple of minutes. I was a little skeptical about Zoom, whose ads I had seen all winter while watching televised Brit soccer games. When Annie compared pricing, we decided to give them a chance. They came out tops, with excellent service and reasonable food, lots of leg room (more than the big operators) and on time service. As well, they fly into several UK cities, including Cardiff, where we wanted to go anyway, as well as Paris. Our multi-city routing did not increase their standard pricing of CAD$149.00 one way. Our return via Montreal was one hour early! Recommended. Tony Cook.
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