Categories: Occitanie, Toulouse Area

573 Renting a Boat on the Canal du Midi with Bobbi Heath (Nov 23)

[00:00:15] Introduction and Guest Welcome

Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 573, cinq cent soixante-treize.

Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

[00:00:31] Today on the podcast

Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Bobbi Heath about renting a boat on the Canal du Midi.

Annie Sargent: Discover how to slow travel through France’s wine country, navigate locks, and enjoy life on the water without needing boating experience. Bobbi shares practical tips, hidden gems, and why this is her favorite vacation ever.

Annie Sargent: Perfect for wine lovers, adventurers, and anyone dreaming of a unique French getaway.

[00:01:00] Podcast supporters

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Annie Sargent: Want to keep me going and skip the ads? There’s a link for that in the show notes as well. And you’ll find everything at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

[00:01:30] Bootcamp 2026

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[00:01:44] Magazine part of the Podcast

Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Bobbi today, I’ll discuss metro and bus glitches in Paris for visitors, also wonder how recent is the whole idea of tourism.

Annie Sargent: If you’d like all the links and the full episode transcript, you can find it on the page that lists all episodes by month at joinusinfrance.com/episodes. And if you’d like a handy summary of the conversation with all the useful links, subscribe to the newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter, because it’s the best way to stay in the loop.

[00:02:29] Renting a Boat on the Canal du Midi with Bobbi Heath

Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Bobbi Heath, and welcome to Join Us in France.

Bobbi Heath: Bonjour, Annie. Thank you for inviting me.

Annie Sargent: Wonderful to have you today. We have a great conversation prepared. You had adventures on the Canal du Midi, and you really enjoyed it. So I want to hear all about it.

[00:02:47] Planning the Canal du Midi Adventure

Annie Sargent: Introduce yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to take this trip and when it took place as well.

Bobbi Heath: Okay. I’m Bobbi Heath. I live in the US, in New England, near the Cape Cod in the winter and in Maine in the summer. We are people who love boats. I’ve been to France, you know, 10 or 12 times since about 2010. And being able to go to France and combine that with a boating adventure was very appealing to me.

Bobbi Heath: So in 2018, my husband Dan and I invited our friends, Amy and Nate, to go with us on a weeklong trip down Canal du Midi. We were able to book it pretty easily and we went from September 29th through August 6th on the canal.

[00:03:38] Starting the Journey: From Carcassonne to Homps

Bobbi Heath: We flew through Madrid to Toulouse and took a train to Carcassonne. We stayed there one night in a B&B and enjoyed that absolutely beautiful, old city and the new city. And then we took a taxi to a little town called Homp, where our canal boat was waiting for us.

Annie Sargent: So spell the name of that town.

Bobbi Heath: H-O-M-P. Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Okay. Very good. Now, why the Canal du Midi? We have a lot of canals in France. Why that one?

Bobbi Heath: Well, because of the location in the Southwest, and because it’s probably the most popular one, that people go on. On subsequent trips, we’ve investigated others but, you know, having enough water in them, in some of the others can be tricky depending on how hot and dry the weather has been. And we also had two different people that we bumped into have been on the Canal du Midi and they recommended it.

Annie Sargent: Excellent. Excellent. So, you started in Homp? Je crois… I think it’s… You say Homp. But I’ve never been there, so I’m not certain-certain how they say it. But you started there. How many kilometers did you travel on this trip, would you say?

Bobbi Heath: Oh, I’m not sure. We started going up the canal, meaning the water was coming down.

[00:05:09] A little bit about the Canal du Midi

Bobbi Heath: Let me just say a little bit about the canal. The Canal du Midi was built in the late 1600s, designed by Pierre-Paul Riquet. Louis XIV was the king, and this was an idea that even the Romans had, connecting the Atlantic to the Mediterranean so that the boats did not have to go around Spain. And Riquet had a number of engineering great ideas that allowed this to happen, the locks being one, and the idea of getting water from the Black Mountains at the highest point on the route so that there would always be water flowing down the canal to the Mediterranean and into the river in Toulouse.

Bobbi Heath: This was a huge improvement for shipping goods around and everything was shipped on these canal barges.

Bobbi Heath: And now, of course, we don’t need them anymore. We have railways and roads, and so mostly, it’s people for pleasure on the Canal du Midi.

[00:06:15] Exploring Carcassonne

Bobbi Heath: So we went first up the river, I mean, up the canal to, back to Carcassonne where we stayed overnight, went to a marvelous restaurant that sadly is not there anymore. We found that our canal boat did not have enough wine glasses which was a bad thing, and so we went to this wonderful wine and cheese shop called La Ferme and they were able to supply us, and to this day we all four still have our wine glasses that we bought there.

Annie Sargent: Very nice.

Bobbi Heath: On the first night we were there we went in the beautiful old medieval city, which there are two parts to Carcassonne, the beautiful medieval city, where we had a fabulous dinner. This was probably the only real gourmet dinner of the trip at La Table d’Alais.

Bobbi Heath: That restaurant is still there. We have gone back to the region several times since this trip because we have friends that moved there during the pandemic and we have been to the restaurant again and it is just as good as it was the first time, so I highly, I highly recommend that one.

Annie Sargent: So is it La Table d’Alain? Is it the first name Alain?

Bobbi Heath: No. D’Alais. D’Alais. A-L-A-I-S.

Annie Sargent: I’ve never eaten there.

Bobbi Heath: I think I gave you a link to it.

Annie Sargent: Ah, you gave me a link. Oh, you’re too good to me. Thank you.

Bobbi Heath: Okay. I like both the new town, the lower town and La Cite which is what they call the medieval city. It is also spectacularly beautiful at night…. and so that’s a good, a good time to go. It has quite a touristy element inside, but there are also some fabulous shops of, we’ve brought back leather goods and table linens and stuff like that. Butthere’s also a lot of, you know, touristy stuff, and a lot of people.

Annie Sargent: Yes, I love the little stores in Carcassonne.

Annie Sargent: For some reason, for a touristy town, most of them I don’t even go in. But in Carcassonne, for some reason, I like those and they’re not that different than other touristy towns but I just happen to like them.

Bobbi Heath: I agree. Me too. That was a really wonderful part of the trip.

[00:08:33] Navigating the Canal: Locks and Logistics

Bobbi Heath: So we turned around in Carcassonne and we started now going down the canal, and going down the canal is a lot easier than going up.

Annie Sargent: Hmm.

Bobbi Heath: Because there are many locks on the canal to adjust the height as the land goes down towards the sea, and it is easier when you’re new to the lock system to toss your bow and stern lines up around the bollard when you can see the bollard, which you can do when you’re going down. When you’re going up, what you do is you stop right before the lock and let a person off, and then that person will catch the lines and put them around the bollard. Though, our team did so well that they didn’t even need someone to do that after a while. They could see the mark on the side of the lock and they could toss the line around the bollard without seeing it.

Annie Sargent: All right. So you are experiencedsailboaters, I guess?

Bobbi Heath: We are experienced boaters but it is not necessary for this trip. I think you should be able to drive a car because you have to steer, but the canal has a speed limit and the rental canal boats aren’t, they are physically fixed so they can’t go faster than that. And that’s eight kilometers an hour or five miles an hour, and the reason for that is not just safety. It’s because the sides of the canal are very fragile, and if people are going fast with wakes, then that erodes the canal. And so everybody is going slow.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Bobbi Heath: All their rental boats have fenders or bumpers all the way around them, so, you know, if they bump into somebody or each other, it’s not a big deal.

Annie Sargent: Right. Now, you’ve said up and down the canal. I’m not used to that sort of terminology. So what you’re saying is that the water runs from west to east? Is that what it is?

Bobbi Heath: No. The water runs from the high point in the canal which is in Neuze?

Annie Sargent: Yeah. Le Seuil de Naurouze, I think it’s called.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah. Naurouze, yes. And so there’s a big pool in Naurouze that collects the water from the Black Mountains, and then there are sluice gates that let it go in, so it goes towards Toulouse in one direction, or they let it go in the other side and it goes towards the Mediterranean.

Annie Sargent: Ah, okay.

Bobbi Heath: You know, the two ends of it are at sea level, well, including the river from Toulouse to the Atlantic. Those two ends are at sea level, but in the middle, it’s higher than that.

Annie Sargent: Sure.

Bobbi Heath: So the water, that was one of the innovations, was finding a way to feed the water into the canal so that it would always have water up.

Annie Sargent: Okay, okay. I get it, I get it. You know, I’ve lived here my whole life and you’re teaching me something. And I’ve gone through the Seuil de Naurouze a few times. Like, when you go, when you drive on the freeway, there’s a big old sign that says, "Oh, Seuil de Naurouze this way."

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: But it, I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s a big mountain or anything. It’s just a hill. It’s, you know, I’m not sure how he… I guess he was a geographer and he knew that it would work.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Right. Engineers and geographers working together made this happen. Okay, so from the Seuil de Naurouze to Toulouse, it runs towards the west?

Bobbi Heath: It, yes, it runs towards Toulouse. Yes, towards the west. And then…

Annie Sargent: Okay. And then on the other side, it runs towards the Med?

Bobbi Heath: Yeah, so it runs towards the east, that’s right.

Annie Sargent: I have learned something. Thank you, Bobbi. I’ve never sailed anything, so.

Bobbi Heath: I’m not sure I learned that until I came back because we, the part that we were on was always going the same way.

Annie Sargent: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that makes sense. Yes, because you started in Homp, and you went west a little bit, but then you made your way back.

Bobbi Heath: We turned around and we came back. The reason we did that was, we really didn’t know how far we were going to get each day.

Annie Sargent: Uh-huh.

Bobbi Heath: And so we wanted to make sure that we could get back to turn the boat in on the proper day.

[00:13:01] Discovering Le Saunier and Amphoralis

Bobbi Heath: And so we went up to Carcassonne and then back through Homp, and then down towards the Med and we went as far as Le Somail.

Annie Sargent: Okay.

Bobbi Heath: A beautiful little town that has lovely canal-side restaurants, beautiful old buildings, and the most amazing bookstore that I ever went in.

Annie Sargent: Really? Why?

Bobbi Heath: Because it has so many books. Of course, they’re all in French.

Annie Sargent: Sure.

Bobbi Heath: I think I’ve read four or five books in French now, very, very slowly. But this bookstore, it’s just incredible. Actually, when we were on the canal, the day we were there it was closed, but I’ve subsequently been back there two or three times, and I always come out with a wonderful book. Maigret, we’ve gotten many Maigret books there.

Annie Sargent: Hmm.

Bobbi Heath: And I … Last time I got a beautiful book with drawings of the Aude area, and little scribbles by an artist. It was just a lovely book that I treasure. And I gave you the name of it in the notes.

Annie Sargent: Right. I’m just looking atGoogle Maps and it’s showing me Le Trouvetou du Livre.

Bobbi Heath: Yes.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. So The Everything Finder of Books. So apparently, it’s someone who likes to go looking for specific books.

Bobbi Heath: Yes, it’s a used bookstore.

Annie Sargent: Very nice.

Bobbi Heath: So, that was quite a treat. The other thing in that area that was wonderful is a museum called the Amphoralis. An amphora is a clay pot usually pointed on the end, in the, you know, 50 AD, they would use these, they would put them on animals and wine and grain and olive oil. Everything was transported around the Roman Empire in these beautiful amphora.

Bobbi Heath: And the Amphoralis is an architectural dig and a museum of amphora that were built at that place thousands of years ago. And it is just, it is just astonishing what they did, and we have enjoyed visiting that.

Bobbi Heath: And in fact, we were so enamored with the name that when we replaced our boat in, here in Maine with a new one, we named it Amphora because it’s a vessel that carries wine.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. Nice. Nice.

[00:15:42] Choosing the Canal Route and Wine Enthusiasm

Bobbi Heath: And you did ask me why did I choose the Canal du Midi. There’s also a reason why I chose the particular part of it that we went on because, you know, the part that we went on is probably less than a quarter of the whole thing.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.

Bobbi Heath: That’s the part where the wineries are. I’m a wine enthusiast, and so I really was more interested in that part. Towards Toulouse beyond where we went is more farming and Castle Nandrie and if you like cassoulet, maybe you want to go there.

Annie Sargent: Right. Right.

Bobbi Heath: And then beyond Le Somail after you go through Béziers, you pretty soon are on, in these, you call them étangs?

Annie Sargent: Les étangs, yeah.

Bobbi Heath: Les étangs, oui. And they’re great big, long, like, saltwater lakes that are along the coast.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.

Bobbi Heath: And I would like to go do that next time, I think.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bobbi Heath: Because, you know, you can go to Sète and Aigues-Mortes and all those nice places, which I’ve been in a car, but I’d like to go to them in a boat.

Annie Sargent: Right, right. No, that would be a lot of fun. Sète in a boat would be fun. It looks so cool, and they do so much. You know, it is true thatNew England and places like Sète have a strong kind of culture of boating, and you’re going to grow up boating around, and it’s part of the enjoyment of life. And some … I mean, I grew up in a city never going on a boat other than, you know, the occasional little trip along the coast or something, but really, it’s so pleasant. There’s something about being on a boat that is just really, really pleasant.

Bobbi Heath: And life slows down.

[00:17:30] Daily Life on the Canal Boat

Bobbi Heath: Our typical day was the night before when we came to where we were going to stay overnight, where we either tied up to the side or we stuck these great big spikes into the side and tied our lines around them. We would go and find the pâtisserie. So in the morning, Amy and I would get up and the guys would sleep in, and we would go buy the baguette and the pastries for breakfast, and we’d come back to the boat, and then we always drove the boat. We left so we would get to the first lock we were going to meet by nine o’clock when the locks open.

Annie Sargent: Hmm.

Bobbi Heath: The locks are open from 9:00 to 7:00 most of the year, or most of the time of the year when you can rent a boat.

Bobbi Heath: And they close for an hour at lunch.

Annie Sargent: Uh-huh.

Bobbi Heath: So a lot of people, you know, who are on vacation, they don’t want to get up early. And so there’s a lot more traffic after lunch than there is in the morning.

Bobbi Heath: And you know, you might have to wait while other boats go through the lock and then the water has to be put in the lock in the other direction.

Bobbi Heath: And the boats come the other way. You could end up waiting an hour or two sometimes… or 30 minutes at a lock. And so we would go early so that we were usually the first people through, and we rarely had to wait.

Annie Sargent: So did you try to arrive at your destination for the day, like early afternoon or something like that?

Bobbi Heath: Yes. Yes. And then we would go explore.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Did you have bicycles on the boat or was this on foot?

Bobbi Heath: Yes. We did have bicycles. Unfortunately, our bicycles, we should have tested the bicycles pretty thoroughly and we didn’t. And so we had one bicycle that, whose chain kept coming off.

Annie Sargent: Hmm.

Bobbi Heath: We got pretty good at putting it back on.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Bobbi Heath: So my recommendation is to people who want to do this, is that you need to check everything that is supposed to be on the boat.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: And make sure that it’s all in working condition and you have enough dishes and linens and stuff. I mean, everything is supplied, the towels, the sheets,it’s all supplied, but you just make sure everything’s there…

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: … and everything works before you depart. And some of these things are extra, like the bicycles are extra. The fuel is not part of the original rental cost, because the amount of fuel you need depends on how far you go. And so, you know, you pay for that at the end. And also the cleaning of the boat, unless you want to do it yourself, but, you know, we didn’t want to do that.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. Did you have to refuel the boat at any point?

Bobbi Heath: No. The boats will go, they go for like two weeks before you have to refuel them.

Annie Sargent: Okay. You know, I mean, this is just me, the electric person, but once all these boats are electric, it’s going to be so much cleaner and they could totally put CCS plugs on the side of the canal at set points and, you know, it’s… They do that with cruise ships that are ginormous. So they can definitely do it for small boats, you know. So that’s the future of boating, I guess.

Bobbi Heath: And it’ll be quieter. Well, we’re already seeing people here with electric outboards here in Maine.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, once you’ve had the quiet and the power of electric, you really don’t… most of us anyway, don’t want to go back to anything else.

[00:21:02] Boat Rentals and Practical Tips

Annie Sargent: We didn’t talk about the company that you rented from and what you’ve learned about the types of companies that do this.

Bobbi Heath: Okay. There are quite a few companies actually. The two that we saw the most boats from were Le Boat, which is where we rented ours, and Locaboat.

Bobbi Heath: And the Locaboats are kind of prettier. They look like the old, they are fiberglass, but they’re in the shape of the old peniche boats, which are the ones that went up and down in the old days. Both of them have, like three or four places along the canal where you can rent the boats and return them. You can rent them for a week or two weeks or whatever you want, and you don’t have to return them at the same place. You do have to return to the same company, of course, but you can start in one place and end in another if you want to only go one direction. I kind of like the idea of going two directions because you actually do see different things depending on which direction you’re going, you know, what you observe.

Annie Sargent: True.

Bobbi Heath: Both of them… I looked up the recent prices, the prices for this year, both  Locaboat and Le Boat, it’s about $1,200 for the week for a boat for, they say four to six people, but I think four people is more comfortable. In the four-person case you… each couple has a state room with a head, a bathroom. Other people could sleep on the cushions around the table, but you know, very comfortable for those small boats, for… the ones they say are four to six people are really great for four.

Annie Sargent: Right. So you have two rooms, but they must be very small rooms.

Bobbi Heath: They are. They are very small rooms.

Bobbi Heath: And that means that you should not arrive with a suitcase. You need to arrive with a duffel bag so you have a place to put it after you’ve taken your stuff off.

Annie Sargent: You know, that is a very wise recommendation.

[00:23:11] Cost and Convenience of Canal Boat Vacations

Bobbi Heath: And both of them this year are about $1,200 for a week, and then it’s maybe 3 or 400 for the fuel, and then the bicycles and stuff is… are not… they’re not very expensive.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. That doesn’t sound like an expensive vacation for four people.

Bobbi Heath: No. And especially because you don’t need to rent a car. The trains along the canal route are very easy to get to the towns where you can rent the boats. Using a train and maybe a short taxi ride.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Bobbi Heath: I don’t know if Uber is big in that region or not. But we took taxis.

Annie Sargent: You can do Uber, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We use Uber. I mean, I’m near Toulouse but we use Uber. What’s the other one? Bolt is another one that you see.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah. So, you know, you do not need a car. You do need to get some groceries and stuff when you first get on the boat. You know, you want your tea bags and…

Annie Sargent: So is it like an Airbnb where when you arrive there’s nothing on the boat?

Bobbi Heath: That’s right. There’s no food on the boat at all. It’s like a floating Airbnb. And of course, you want to get your wine. The grocery stores, the Intermarche, the Leclerc, they all have very good selections of wine and everything that you want. And so we usually had dinner somewhere in the town, whenever we could, and we would have lunch on the boat, and the lunch would be cheese, fruit, tomatoes, bread, you know, saucisson, that kind of a picnic lunch.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: The boats have, they have a stove and an oven. We used the stove to make hot water, and we didn’t ever use the oven.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But you could do basic cooking if you wanted to.

Bobbi Heath: You could do if you wanted to.

Annie Sargent: And there’s probably a small fridge?

Bobbi Heath: Yes, a small fridge.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, like how big? …

Bobbi Heath: You know, under the counter kind of fridge.

Annie Sargent: Okay. Okay. Under the counter type of size. Okay.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah, the galley is not very big. It’s maybe six feet long counter, storage underneath.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.

Bobbi Heath: You know, stove, oven, fridge.

Annie Sargent: A few drawers perhaps, and that’s it.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Silly question, but we’re, we just got done with the, a first very hot few days. Are these air conditioned or no? Or heated even?

Bobbi Heath: Not to my knowledge. But, you know, it was the end of September when we went.

Annie Sargent: Right. End of September, early October, you … most years you don’t need it.

Bobbi Heath: We didn’t need it then.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: So I would say that Le Boat actually, both of them have very good websites. Le Boat actually has a big chart that will show you how long it will take you to get from place A to place B. You know, all down through the locks, which is very useful. …

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.

Bobbi Heath: Next time I go, I would do Locaboat just to try their pretty boats, and to see, you know- … to see how different it was. But both of those, and they are both very good about answering emails if you have a question.

[00:26:26] Booking Tips and Seasonal Advice

Bobbi Heath: And one more thing about the cost. If you want to book like three months ahead of time, they’ll give you like 30% off.

Annie Sargent: Oh, wow.

Bobbi Heath: I mean, the big times are July and August.

Bobbi Heath: Especially, you can get a discount especially if you go earlier in the season or later.

[00:26:42] Weather Considerations for Your Trip

Bobbi Heath: Now, you can probably speak better to this than I can, which is, it’s maybe more rainy in the spring than in the fall?

Annie Sargent: Yeah, sometimes. It depends. This year was not particularly rainy in the spring. Last year we had a very rainy spring. So who knows? Who knows, you know?

Bobbi Heath: I was by the canal the last two weeks of March and it poured, so … This year. This year. So, you were lucky.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. Oh, it can pour, that’s for sure. It can happen. But overall, this year was a little drier than last. But it still rained plenty. Yeah. Yeah. I think if I was going to do something like this, I would try it in April or May, maybe June. But you know what? This year, June has been very, very hot.

Bobbi Heath: And I think you, you definitely don’t want to do it in August.

[00:27:32] Cultural Observations on the Canal

Bobbi Heath: And also, the people on other boats were not French. They were German, they were English, they were Australian, they were Dutch. We did not see any rental boat that, when we spoke to the people that they were French, which is interesting.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: Now, the individual barges that people own, those are mostly Dutch people, but some of them could have been French.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. I think the Dutch have a very strong culture of boating.

Bobbi Heath: Yes.

Annie Sargent: You know, French not as much, unless they are coastal French people.

Bobbi Heath: Exactly. Many more sailboats.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

[00:28:06] Navigating the Canal and Starting Points

Annie Sargent: You mentioned in the document you sent me that perhaps you would start at Argens instead, so that you can do the etang? You can do the … How do you say etang in English?

Bobbi Heath: I don’t know. It’s like a… …

Annie Sargent: It’s a place where birds nest.

Bobbi Heath: Well, I don’t know. It’s not really a marsh.

Annie Sargent: L’Etang de thau?

Bobbi Heath: It’s not really a marsh.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. It’s a …

Bobbi Heath: It’s like a lake, but it’s a saltwater lake right on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

Annie Sargent: A lagoon, I guess.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah, a lagoon. Yes. Like a lagoon.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. It’s a lagoon. Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: So when I told you that was before I read that going down the seven-lock staircase at Fonseranes might take you a day or two days waiting in line. And so you can start … Homp and Argens are very near each other, so you could … and the two different boat, one of, Locaboat is in Argens and Le Boat is in Homp. So you could do what we did.

Annie Sargent: I see.

Bobbi Heath: You could do what we did in, from either of those places. But I think I would start in Cassafieres, which is kind of towards the end of the canal down in the etang.

Annie Sargent: Cassafieres? How do you say, how do you spell that?

Bobbi Heath: Oh, Cassafieres. C-A-S-S-A-F-I-E-R-E-S. That is where Locaboat has their most eastward place where you can rent a boat, is in Port  Cassafieres.

Annie Sargent: So,  Cassafieres. Ah, okay. I’m finding it now. Okay. Yeah, I’ve never heard of any of these places.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Port  Cassafieres. Portiragnes. Portiragnes is a town, I guess. Interesting. So you would go from this Port  Cassafieres, and you would go…

Annie Sargent: No, I would go west. And then come back. Because, you know, I’ve been to the seven locks in a row in Fonseranes. That’s in Narbonne. Fonseranes, yes, that’s by Narbonne.

Bobbi Heath: It’s in Béziers.

Annie Sargent: Oh, Béziers, you’re right, you’re right, it’s…

Bobbi Heath: That is beautiful, I’ve been there on foot, but…

Annie Sargent: Right, me, too.

Annie Sargent: If you have to wait in line a whole day to go through it…Yeah, you’re not moving much.

Bobbi Heath: So I would start on the other, I would start on the eastern side of that stack of locks.

Annie Sargent: Fantastic. So, what other advice can you give people who are thinking about doing this? What other things would you recommend?

[00:30:34] Essential Gear and Preparations

Bobbi Heath: So I would recommend that you bring, you have non-slip shoes, you bring gloves for handling the lines, they’re quite rough, and the water’s very dirty.

Annie Sargent: Aha.

Bobbi Heath: The water is really dirty.

Bobbi Heath: Sunglasses, hat, anything you might need from a drugstore. Most of the towns in France have a pharmacy, more likely a pharmacy than a grocery store, actually. But you really need to bring your meds with you. If you are gluten-free, you need to bring your bread with you, and your pastries, because I, even though French flour has less gluten in it, if you really can’t have any. I don’t know, Annie, maybe you have some advice on that?

Annie Sargent: No, I don’t, I’ve heard people say, "I can’t handle gluten in the US but I do fine in France." But I’m assuming that if you have celiac disease, the full-on celiac disease, you can’t eat either one.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

[00:31:31] Family and Group Travel Tips

Bobbi Heath: I would recommend that if you’re not a boater, that you have four people, it’s very easy to do the locks with four people. With two, it’s more difficult, and if you only have two people, then you probably should start going downstream, because it is easier to learn there.

Bobbi Heath: I would not take small children on this. Teenagers I would take, but the locks require attention from everyone on the boat, because there are going to be two or three other boats in the locks locked with you quite frequently. And there is a person who is making the water go in and out. There’s a lock guy.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, master or whatever.

Bobbi Heath: Those people are expecting everyone on the boat, on all the boats, to do the right things. We were in a lock once where two boats got too close together, and one of them was kind of hung up on the other one, and the lock-keeper was yelling at these guys, and he had to add water back in the lock so that they could get separate from each other. So little kids, I wouldn’t bring them.

Annie Sargent: Right, but teenagers or older kids that are used to boats, maybe?

Bobbi Heath: Yeah. However, when you think of teenagers, you know, this is in a bucolic area. There’s not a huge, there’s no movie theater when you get where you’re going each night, you know?

Annie Sargent: No, no, yeah.

[00:32:54] Dining and Local Attractions

Bobbi Heath: And also, I would say, if you want to do the most beautiful villages in Provence, this is not that. These are wonderful towns, many of them with 19th and 18th century buildings in them, with delightful vineyards, nice wine-tasting, but it’s not, you know, there’s not a lot of beautiful baskets of flowers and stuff. There’s some, but-

Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s not Instagrammable, most of these places. They are very nice, but it’s not the sort of place where you see a thousand pictures of that on Instagram.

Bobbi Heath: Yes. I have beautiful videos of going down the canal and the trees planted on both sides, and people riding bicycles on the path next to it. You know, it’s lovely in that sense. And in Homps, which is near Carcassonne, there is a bridge that has a beautiful flower baskets on it that’s absolutely gorgeous, near a good bakery, by the way. But you know, that’s not … that’s not every town.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, and if you show up on a Sunday night, that’s the typical problem in France. On a Sunday night, all the restaurants are closed. That they were open Saturday…

Bobbi Heath: Yes.

Annie Sargent: Finding a place to eat on Sunday night isn’t, or on a Monday night, is sometimes not easy.

Bobbi Heath: Yes.

Annie Sargent: So you need to, you know, you need to be aware of these things and just have a plan B, just in case you don’t find anywhere. Because these are not big places. They’re not going to have a, you know, 50 restaurants to choose from.

Bobbi Heath: Yes. And I would recommend the Waterways Guide, that Breil publishes. You can buy them. Well, I think they have them on the Leboats, and at Locaboat, you can buy one, but we got one before we went and it describes every lock, every town, and then you can go look them up and see what kind of restaurants there are. And, you know, I had a plan before we left of roughly where we would stay each night based mainly on the restaurants.

Annie Sargent: Right, because you could stop anywhere. I mean, You could dock your boat along the side of the canal anywhere you want, right?

Bobbi Heath: Yes. That’s right. You can. You can.

[00:35:04] Alternative Travel Options

Bobbi Heath: Now, there are some alternatives if you don’t want to drive the boat. There are hotel barges with crews and meals, and they drive and you just enjoy, and they stop in various places and maybe take you on a tour of something, you know, a winery,or some interesting thing in the town. Those are, of course, much more expensive.

Bobbi Heath: But, you know, if you don’t want to drive the boat, you know, we like to go on boats that we can drive. And then another alternative is biking the canal tow path instead of boating. And so the canal tow paths are very pretty, and nobody’s got horses towing their boats anymore, so they’re used for hiking and biking. There are companies that will help you do that. So that’s another thing that you can do.

Annie Sargent: And you don’t really need a company. You could do it by yourself and just, if you want, your backpack carried. There are, like, La Malle Postale who could take it for you. There are, you know, things you could do, although La Malle Postale is mostly for hikers, I think, but maybe they do bikers as well.

Annie Sargent: I’m not familiar enough to be sure, but you mentioned in your document that you know, you go to the market in the morning, and you buy a few things, and then it’s just slow travel, which is the beauty of it, and it suits some people, but not so much other people.

[00:36:34] Favorite Vacation Ever

Annie Sargent: You wrote in what you sent me that this was your favorite vacation ever.

Bobbi Heath: Yes, absolutely, because it combined: France, wine, and boats. Those are, like, all my favorite things. And sometimes you might even find an outdoor market. There is a website called Jour de Marche.fr, and you can put in the name of a town and it will tell you where and when the markets are. So Carcassonne, Trèbes, they all have markets that you would be able to walk to from your boat if you happen to be there on the right day.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Bobbi Heath: And I do love, I love fine food and vegetables and stuff at the markets. That’s, like, really nice.

Annie Sargent: Right. And the canal does not go very close to the Carcassonne Citadel, right? It’s closer to the new city.

Bobbi Heath: The canal is, goes right by the railroad station in the lower town.

Annie Sargent: Okay.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Okay.

Bobbi Heath: It is a little walk to get to …

Annie Sargent: Right.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. But the Citadel is not that far. If you’re at the train station, you can hoof it to the Citadel, or take a,there’s a public bus, there’s taxis, et cetera.

Annie Sargent: So, if you don’t want to hoof it, there’s other ways to do this.

Annie Sargent: But yeah, it sounds like, you know, a really nice way to enjoy a week.

[00:37:55] Is a week too long?

Annie Sargent: Do you think you would have gotten bored if you did it too long? Like, a week is sufficient, right?

Bobbi Heath: Oh, I could have easily done another week going, you know, further along the canal and been perfectly happy. But you can see quite a bit of it in a week. You can have a really good time.

Bobbi Heath: You know, one time when we went in the car to Castelnaudary and we stopped at where Locaboat has the western end of where they run the boats. And we met these people who had done the whole canal, and they do it every year, and they’ve done it for 20 years, this group do the canal every year.

Annie Sargent: Wow.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: So they probably just do it because they like to hang out together.

Bobbi Heath: And it’s a beautiful place to hang out where you get to be in a different place every night.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, you don’t want to be with someone who bores you.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: That’s not good.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Because you would not have a lot of good company. Like, if there’s nothing much else happening. So you want to go with people you like.

Bobbi Heath: That’s very true.

Annie Sargent: So I’m assuming that even the good boats, the pretty boats, it’s not super plush in there, right? I mean, it’s like…

Bobbi Heath: No, I think my husband said, "It’s like an RV that floats." I think that that’s the way I would describe it.

Bobbi Heath: Now, all of these boat companies have newer boats and boats that have been in service for longer, and so the newer ones may be a bit nicer, and they will, of course, cost a bit more. But on their websites, they give you quite a good picture of, they give you a map of the layout of the boats and they give you pictures of the insides. So, you know, you could get a pretty good idea.

Annie Sargent: Right. And you probably don’t want to show up with too much stuff…

Bobbi Heath: Right.

Annie Sargent: … because you would have nowhere to put it.

Annie Sargent: That’s right. But you do need rain gear, and, you know, when we went, we needed, you know, sweatshirts and stuff because it was cool. Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: You do not need your bathing suit because you do not want to swim in it. It is very dirty, so no swimming.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: Unless you’re in a place where there is another body of water to swim in.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. And I don’t think you fish in it either. I wouldn’t eat fish from there. Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: No, no. No. Definitely not.

Annie Sargent: Hopefully, someday it’ll be nicer, but at this moment in history, it’s not great. Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: And as you say, there are lots of other canals. There are canals in Burgundy and Champagne, and those would be really fun too, but you run a risk in some of them when you book them ahead of time, and you’ve got your flights and everything, and then if there’s not enough water, then you’re in France, but you don’t have a place that you thought you were going to stay.

Annie Sargent: Right, right. And this happens with river cruises all the time.

Bobbi Heath: I guess it does, yeah.

Annie Sargent: Yes, the river cruises, like, with bigger cruise boats that can have a few hundred passengers and whatever, I’ve heard of people saying, "Well, we booked a river cruise," and it was really a bus tour because the boat couldn’t go very much, you know? The boat could only go from A to B, and we were supposed to do C and D and E, and we didn’t. We did that… I mean, they still, you know, took you around, but in a bus.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: So…

Bobbi Heath: I don’t… Yeah, that’s not going toa… there’s not going to be a bus, I don’t think, for these guys that rent these boats.

Annie Sargent: No, not on the Canal du Midi. But you did say that it has enough water, right?

Bobbi Heath: Yes, I don’t think that that is really a problem with the Canal du Midi, but it is, I think it is with some of the other canals.

Annie Sargent: Yes, yes.

[00:41:31] Wine Adventures Along the Canal

Bobbi Heath: Maybe I should say a little bit about the wine adventures.

Annie Sargent: Yes, briefly. We need to… But yes, I want to hear about that.

Bobbi Heath: So mostly, we bought wine at the grocery stores, and we, you know, bought wine of the region, and we tried it ourselves on the boat.

Bobbi Heath: But inArgens, there is a cooperative that’s right on the river in this big, beautiful building, and it’s almost a museum of wine. They have big, beautiful pictures of each of the kinds of grapes that are grown in the area where they describe them. And you can see all the vats and everything. And they do a tasting. So we did a tasting there. And they also have, should you have your own container, you can do a vin en vrac.

Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah.

Bobbi Heath: Where you take a nozzle that looks like you’re filling your car up, and you squirt wine into your container, and you take it with you. So that’s nice. In Paraza, there’s Chateau Paraza, where I later went to a music concert and did a wine tasting there. But that’s easily walkable from the canal.

Bobbi Heath: And then you may find, you know, some little guys just trying to get started with a sign on the canal, trying to make their wine and you can go try them too.

Annie Sargent: Sure. And what’s good about this is, you know, on big cruise ships, you have to pay a fortune to get wifi, to get any data. But here you’re so… I mean, you’re, might as well be on land. It’s the same right?

Bobbi Heath: You just use your phone.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, your phone will work perfectly well so long as you have a data plan. You don’t have to plan on anything else. And if you have that book that tells you all the places you can go, I assume it also includes some wineries.

Annie Sargent: There’s a lot of very low-key kind of wineries in this area where you can just, you know, go in and see what they have and try a few things and buy a couple of bottles, and they’re very happy to see you. It’s really not like the sort of place where you have to make an appointment and pay a fee for wine tasting and whatever.

Annie Sargent: I doubt any of these places charge a fee for anything.

Bobbi Heath: Yeah, it’s much more laid back. And most of where we were is in the Minervois region, which… lovely, lovely wine.

Annie Sargent: It’s good wine.

Bobbi Heath: It’s good… It’s very good wine.

Annie Sargent: Minerve is good wine, yeah. Yeah, Corbieres and Minerve are very good wines. They’re red mostly, but they are really, really interesting. And they don’t export very much because this area, for historical reasons, because this area has suffered from some bad reputation in the ’50s and ’60s, but they’ve cleaned up their act, and they make good wines now.

Bobbi Heath: They do. And you’re very close to Corbieres, so you can easily get those. Saint-Chinian, there’s lots of really nice wine there, and it’s not expensive.

Annie Sargent: I would say, if you’re going to do this, you might not… I mean, I assume that the people who go on these sorts of vacations are perhaps retired or some of them anyway are, and they might want to, you know, pair that up with a week with a car or something, like do something else around it.

[00:44:43] Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Bobbi Heath: Absolutely.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, where you get to see… go a little further and see other things that are not right around the canal. Because when you’re on a boat, you’re kind of tied to the canal. You can’t go that far. I mean, if you have a bike, you could go a few places, if the bikes were good enough.

Bobbi Heath: Yes. Well, and you know, if you fly into Toulouse… We went through Madrid, but there’s not… There’s a lot of different ways to get to Toulouse. You can rent a car and go to Bordeaux, which is what we did this year after we spent two weeks down by the canal. Then we went… a few months ago, we went to Bordeaux for a week.

Annie Sargent: Right, right, right. And so this recent, this more recent vacation, you didn’t…… do any boating on the canal. You just spent time along the canal.

Bobbi Heath: Yes. Our friends live very close to Le Somail. And we have been back three times since we did the canal boat trip. And so we, in the car, we investigated the canal in both directions beyond where we went, you know, to see if we would like to go there in the future.

Annie Sargent: And this is the sort of place where you have a lot of abbeys, some of them you can visit. You have a lot of chateaus, they name them the Cathar castles but, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’ll do. So you don’t have like… It’s not Loire castles, okay? This is mostly castles that have had a very hard life.

Bobbi Heath: Yes.

Annie Sargent: Where there’s not much left of them. But it makes for a fun hike up to this high point and views, and there’s great gastronomy in the area. There’s just a lot of fun things that you can do around this if you have the time. And if you take this sort of vacation, clearly, you like to take your time.

Annie Sargent: And here’s another restaurant, Auberge de la Croisade in Cruzy. I put that in the notes for you. Right, I’ll put it in the website as well, yeah.

Bobbi Heath: That’s a very good one. It’s a little bit beyond…

Annie Sargent: I saw it, you recommended several and there’s a bunch of them. There’s a bunch of-

Bobbi Heath: I think I’ve mentioned them. Yeah.

Bobbi Heath: Unfortunately, not everyone that we went to in 2018 is still there, sadly. But we’ve found some new ones in subsequent visits.

Annie Sargent: Restaurants come and go. That’s just the nature of the business.

Bobbi Heath: They do.

Annie Sargent: Bobbi, it has been a delight talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing all that. I think in this crazy world that we live in, it would be very nice to get away for a week with some good friends and just reconnect and not do all that much besides a few, you know, moving the boat a little bit every day.

Bobbi Heath: Yes, absolutely. That’s my kind of vacation.

Annie Sargent: Merci beaucoup, Bobbi, and enjoy your future visits to France.

Bobbi Heath: Thank you. We will.

Annie Sargent: Merci. Au revoir.

[00:47:36] Thank you Patrons

Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get many exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.

Annie Sargent: I don’t have any new patrons to thank this week because this had to be pre-recorded early on account of my trip through France that I’ll tell you about in just a second.

Annie Sargent: Would you join my patrons too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the things that I make extra for you.

Annie Sargent: Go to patreon.com/joinus.

Annie Sargent: And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.

[00:48:21] Eiffel Tower Tour Review VoiceMap

Annie Sargent: Somebody left this review of my VoiceMap tour this week. This is about the Eiffel Tower.

Annie Sargent: "I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower before but did not know about some of the vantage points Annie takes us to in this walking tour. The incredible viewpoints plus the interesting information she provides make the cost of this walking tour money well spent and a real bargain."

[00:48:43] Latin Quarter Tour Review VoiceMap

Annie Sargent: About my Latin Quarter tour, "Incredible walking tour packed with so many interesting spots that a casual stroll through the area doesn’t see. Thank you for a fabulous tour."

Annie Sargent: Well, thank you for taking the time to take the tours and review them. VoiceMap is like having your own private tour guide in your pocket.

Annie Sargent: You can pause me whenever you want, grab a coffee, explore a side street. The tour picks right back up again when you’re ready. There’s no rushing, no schedule to follow.

[00:49:13] Discount for Podcast Listeners

Annie Sargent: And podcast listeners get an exclusive discount when you buy these tours directly from my website.

Annie Sargent: That’s also a good way to support the show, because it means more of what you pay comes straight to me instead of going through Apple or Google.

Annie Sargent: And if you’re planning a trip to France and would like some expert help, you can hire me as your itinerary consultant. If you already have a plan, I’ll help you fine-tune it. And if you’re just feeling overwhelmed by all the choices and not sure what sources to trust, I can design a custom plan for you.

Annie Sargent: You’ll find all the details at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

[00:49:49] Tickets for Tourists

Annie Sargent: Let’s talk about getting around Paris, because if you’re planning a trip soon, there’s a good chance you’ll run into one of these new and sometimes confusing ticketing systems.

Annie Sargent: First, the Navigo Easy card. It is supposed to make life simpler for travelers in Paris, but it’s actually leaving a lot of people confused and occasionally stranded. This is the one I usually recommend, but with a few caveats. You need to understand this, how this works, because they’ve made it over-complicated, which is a very French thing to do.

Annie Sargent: This little plastic card replaced paper metro tickets. It costs two euros to buy the card, and you can hold single rides or day passes. That sounds good, right? The problem is you cannot load all types of tickets on it. Some buses, transfers, and regional routes still require separate purchases, so a lot of people get stuck at turnstiles having to buy another ticket.

Annie Sargent: Commuters are complaining online about double charges sometimes, lost trips, and, you know, minor system bugs.

Annie Sargent: One traveler said his card counted two fares for the same ride. Anyway, there’s … Things happen with this card that is unfortunate. Even drivers, bus drivers are frustrated, because passengers sometimes take it out on them and they can’t do anything about it.

Annie Sargent: Tourists are struggling too. One visitor from the Netherlands said she had to buy several Navigo Easy cards, because one card would not work for all her routes. Yes, you have to have a separate one for metro and buses.

Annie Sargent: Teachers, for example, if they’re planning school outings, they have the same issue. They can’t easily buy multiple types of tickets at once. Île-de-France Mobilités, the agency in charge, admits there are some logistical problem and promises improvements. But for now, the Navigo Easy remains, well, not so easy.

Annie Sargent: Now, in other news, this one might surprise you, a few Paris buses have gotten a credit card reader for a ticket machine. Yes, you heard that right. So Île-de-France Mobilités has started installing small terminals on a few buses where you can buy a single ticket by tapping your credit or debit card.

Annie Sargent: Paying for a bus ticket with a credit card? What kind of wild, futuristic, crazy idea is that? Of course you can’t pay with cash anymore, right? That would be too simple, and let’s not even suggest that an occasional visitor might not want to install yet another app just to ride one bus one time. But here’s the catch.

Annie Sargent: The new tap system is just for emergencies. In France, they call it dépannage. It’s a backup solution for when you forget your Navigo pass and can’t buy a ticket before boarding. You tap your card, it charges €2.50, and you’re good to go for that one bus trip. No transfers, no reduced fare, just that single ride.

Annie Sargent: And normally, a bus ticket is  €2.00, so you’re already paying extra for the privilege of tapping your card. It’s not the true "Tap to ride" system you find in cities like London or Lyon or Toulouse, but it’s a very small step in that direction.

Annie Sargent: Paris says upgrading every metro turnstile and tram gate would be too costly. So for now, this new system will stay limited to buses, gradually expanding through 2026.

Annie Sargent: Until then, you can still buy tickets by text. Just send your bus line number to 93100. I mean, what’s next? Buying a ticket via fax? Or you can use your smartphone, with the Bonjour RATP app or Ile-de-France Mobilités app, and also SNCF Connect app. It’s amazing. It works.

Annie Sargent: So if you’re coming to Paris soon, my advice is skip the frustration. Use your phone to buy your tickets. It’ll make your life much, much easier.

[00:54:07] Tourism… modern or not?

Annie Sargent: Did you know that tourism is not as modern as we think? Let me take you on a short journey through the surprising origins, starting right in Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Annie Sargent: Recently, I listened to an interview with Frédéric Gérard, and he reminded me that while over seven million people visit the Eiffel Tower each year and 75% of them are from abroad, most of us don’t think about how travel for pleasure came to be.

Annie Sargent: In a way, you can trace tourism all the way back to ancient Rome.

Annie Sargent: The Romans built impressive roads that made travel easier for trade, of course, but also for exploration. Still, travel for fun didn’t really take off until the 17th and 18th century in France when wealthy educated Europeans started doing what they called Le Grand Tour. These were extended trips across classical lands, Italy, Greece, France for culture, art, and knowledge.

Annie Sargent: And of course, you had the pilgrims who went around all over Europe, to Compostela, to Rome, to Rocamadour, to holy sites like that, Jerusalem. But that was more of a religious kind of endeavor, let’s put it that way. It’s actually from the Grand Tours in the 17th and 18th century that we get the word tourism and tourists.

Annie Sargent: Then in the 19th century, a British man named Thomas Cook created the first travel agencies. He organized group trips, some even came through Strasbourg and Paris. Later, he added Nile cruises and world tours, which are kind of amazing. And thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, global travel suddenly became faster and easier. Back in Paris, the 1900 Universal Exposition was a huge driver of tourism too.

Annie Sargent: The beautiful Pont Alexandre III was built specifically for the expo, the goal, to connect the Champs-Élysées to des Invalides with a flat bridge. Though the engineers didn’t quite stick to the plan, it’s slightly arched, better for boats, but nobody’s complaining because it’s so gorgeous.

Annie Sargent: Oh, and here’s something quirky: one of the hottest attractions in the late 19th century Paris was… take a guess… the sewers!

Annie Sargent: Yes, people used to visit the sewers of Paris in little wagons pulled by locomotives. Oh my God, that would be so awful. These tours ran until the 1950s when boats briefly took over. Today, you can explore the Paris sewer system at a museum near the Quai d’Orsay, minus the wagon or boat.

Annie Sargent: So next time you’re wandering Paris or planning a trip, remember, tourism may feel modern, but it’s been making the rounds for centuries, layered with culture, curiosity, and more than a few surprises under foot.

[00:57:14] Annie’s Travels

Annie Sargent: I’ll be off exploring France between November 22nd and December 3rd. I’ll be driving to Paris to meet my godson and his very pregnant girlfriend for a two-day visit of Paris.

Annie Sargent: Like most French people, they don’t know Paris very well, and my sister has them convinced that they haven’t seen nothing in Paris until they’ve seen it with me. It’s true that I have fun showing people around Paris. So off we go. It’s my chance to spend time with my godson, which I haven’t done since he was a child and he’s now an, a full-grown dentist, and his wife is also a full-grown dentist. Well, not wife yet, but that’ll be next, that’ll be soon. And I figure, I might as well see more of France on the way. So, I’ll be stopping in Poitiers for three nights, Rouen for two nights, Paris for five nights. Only two days with the family, but I have some catching up to do in Paris.

Annie Sargent: There’s been some new attractions that I want to see besides the family visits.

Annie Sargent: And then I’ll do three nights in Vichy. So it’s kind of a nice oval around France, from Toulouse to Poitiers to Rouen, Paris, Vichy, and back to Toulouse. These are all cities that I don’t know and want to explore. The electric car will get a lot of use but, it got new rear tires for its trouble, Michelin tires, of course!

Annie Sargent: I’ll be getting some more practice doing travel videos of places I don’t know. I did one at Toulouse with my daughter, who’s going to be my sidekick going forward, but we tried to cram in too much and I have to simplify it. That’s a problem, I think, when you know a city, you’re like, "Oh, I could add this, I could add that, and maybe I should talk about this and that," and then you don’t have the right footage, and then you’re like, "Ah, I’m stuck."

Annie Sargent: Anyway. Live and learn. I knew that learning how to produce an audio podcast and make a website had stretched my gray matter.

Annie Sargent: Well, doing travel video will stretch my gray matter even further, but I do love a challenge. I’m still practicing on my very kind patrons before I dare put anything out in YouTube. People in YouTube are not going to be as friendly as my patrons, that’s for sure. I know you can’t tell by listening to me, I sound like I’m a very confident person, but in real life, I’m not a looker type of person, you know.

Annie Sargent: I’m an average looking person. I’m kind of heavy and all of that, and it makes me insecure in videos. But I will get over that hangup because some of my very favorite YouTubers are not fabulous looking either, and I still really enjoy their work, so I need to get over that hangup.

Annie Sargent: So little by little, I’ll just be including more videos, and hopefully my daughter will come along to help me out.

Annie Sargent: Although she’s not coming on this trip because she also has a full time job, so can’t do everything.

Annie Sargent: My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.

[01:00:12] Next week on the podcast

Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about eating vegetarian in Paris with Amber Haggerty. Great suggestions and inspiration for plant eaters and all eaters really, because eating plants is best for us.

Annie Sargent: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.

[01:00:40] Copyright

Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Categories: Occitanie, Toulouse Area