Little by little, the bird builds his nest.

We're jumping around with posts on how we actually got here, so I'm starting in the middle.

After our initial barge scouting trip in the fall of 2009, we returned to France in May of 2010, first to attend Tam and Di Murrell's barge handling school in Cambrai, and then to begin in earnest our search for a barge. The barge class was great - more on that in another posting.

In planning the trip, we wanted to find a gite ("zheet") - a rural house, with a living room, bedroom and cooking facilities, so we would have more space than a hotel room, and the ability to cook some of our meals. With amazingly good luck, we found the website for Au Grenier de la Chouette, a bed and breakfast inn also offering a gite, in the tiny, beautiful Bourgogne village of Villy le Brule, conveniently situated between the beautiful town of Beaune, and St. Jean de Losne. St. Jean de Losne is where we started our original search for barges, and it sits at the confluence of two canals and the Saone River.

When we arrived at the gite, we were welcomed by the owners Maryse and Ariel, who took us for a tour of the property, complete with free range hens ("the girls") providing fresh eggs, a beautiful organic garden, koi pond, an orchard, and a pasture with two sweet goats, Pepito and Margot. A freshly baked loaf of bread with homemade jams (from the orchard fruit) was sitting on the kitchen table. Ariel told us the "girls" would love us if we fed them our day old bread. We instantly fell in love with the place - it seemed a shame that we would be running around looking at boats, it was such a slice of heaven.

Here in France, many gite owners will do a "table d'hote" - a family style dinner with local dishes and delicacies. We were in great luck, as Maryse had actually owned two restaurants in Dijon before trading that hectic pace for the life of an innkeeper. We enjoyed family recipes for beef bourgignon and chicken (not our girls) in a dijon mustard sauce. But early on, we noticed a SCUBA sticker on one of their cars, and it turns out they are avid scuba divers, so we had many wonderful conversations about diving. When it came time for us to leave, we all were sad, and we told Maryse we would be back soon - we had no idea how soon it would be. We hadn't found our barge but we weren't giving up and were determined to come back and continue our search.

Shortly after our return to the states, a few new barge listings came on the market. I hopped on the internet, found a good airfare, looked at the B & B's website and planned our return based on the availability of the gite. We were greeted like long lost relatives by Maryse and Ariel. When we first started looking at the reasons we were so drawn to France, we should have added the kindness and generosity of the French people. We found our first friends here in France with Maryse and Ariel. Although we were driving from place to place like maniacs looking at boats, we were able to enjoy an evening with some of their mutual friends, Michael and Jackie, from England. We found our boat on nearly the last day of our trip, and as we were getting ready to leave, Maryse, who had been helping us with our French, handed Randy the note in French, which translates to "Little by little, the bird builds his nest." Maryse gave us the clue to naming our boat - Alouette, the lark.