Dordives to Montargis

(Pictures: Biking along the canal, railroad crossing closed!, display at the glass museum, Jean Claude the glassblower, a WWII memorial en route to Montargis)

Today was our last day of biking, and it was a day full of adventures! We set off in the morning and began making our way to Dordives. Our first destination was a glass blowing museum. But with the museum in sight, and only a set of railroad tracks left to cross, we discovered to our dismay that the crossing was closed and we couldn’t get by! Since we’d been biking along the canal, we had to go back almost the entire way we’d already come to find another crossing. It was a bit of a setback and made us late to our tour of the museum, but secretly I was a bit glad because it meant more time on the bikes!

Once we finally made it to the museum, we were given a very nice tour by a British lady named Sue. The museum traces the history of glass making and has many, many examples of different types of glass products and glassblowing tools. We saw one piece that one an award for the best piece of glassware made in 2007 in France. It was a large sphere shaped piece that is made of thousands of joints in the shapes of birds and other animals, and took 18 months and over 600 hours of work to complete! After the tour we watched a demonstration by a retired glassblower. This was really neat to watch. He showed us how they use a blow-torch to heat the glass, and spin it into different shapes. Anything he made was attached to a long cylinder of glass which he blew into to fill the soft glass with air and give it shape. He even designed a face into a sphere of glass, and gave it to me to take home!

After the museum we made our way to Montargis where we are staying tonight. Along the way we stopped in Ferrieres for lunch. We got more sandwiches from a little bakery shop and for dessert Gramzie had Crème Brulee and I had a raspberry tart. It was very good. On our way we encountered more obstacles. It seemed to be a prime day for road work and construction in France, and Odile had to ask very nicely several times for permission to pass – otherwise we would have had to go way out of the way of our route! Not so hard to detour in a car, but many extra miles on a bike isn’t always possible! But Odile is very charming and we were allowed to pass.

Montargis is a very nice little city of about 50,000 people. It is called the Venice of Galatais, the region of France in which it is located, because many different canals run through the town. There was a nice main street with many shops and Gramzie and I had a pleasant afternoon outing browsing around. That evening Odile told us we biked about 20 miles today, making for a grand total of 110 over the course of the trip! Not too shabby!

The farewell dinner was delectable. Markus pulled out all the stops to impress us one last time. Our appetizer was an arugula salad with country ham, which is similar to prosciutto. The main course was duck cooked in an orange glaze, chickery – a vegetable I’d never had before but is somewhat like an artichoke but with a more bitter taste, tomato and endives. After the main course we had a wonderful cheese platter with four different types of cheese, and grapes and nuts. The cheese was delicious. With the cheese we had port wine and Reint made a farewell toast. And this wasn’t all! Afterwards we had a crepe served with marinated pineapple and French vanilla ice cream with toasted almonds. It was all superb. Markus really outdid himself!

Sadly it was our last meal on board the Fleur. Tomorrow we leave at 6am!!! to head back to Paris and say farewell to our fellow bikers. But just because the bike trip is over doesn’t mean my adventures with Gramzie are! Check back tomorrow to see what else we’re up to!