All aboard the Elodie!

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This morning the weather has taken a turn for the worse. It is a bit cooler than it has been for the last three days and a bit wet!! Not to be deterred by a bit of drizzle, we headed off to do a canal boat tour. We bought our tickets and just missed out on getting straight onto a boat. After waiting patiently for about 20 minutes with no-one else turning up, we were taken on a private canal boat tour!! A private tour is worth €207.00, but we only paid the standard price of €6.90 per ticket. How lucky is that?!

Next we bought some Tia Maria that we tracked down in an 'English' bottle shop/tobacconist yesterday on our way to the Beguinage. Coffee liqueur has been really hard to find in Belgium!! After ham and salami paninis for a light lunch, we headed back to iRoom to meet the taxi Anne booked for us this morning to take us to the Elodie.

Right on time at 2.00pm, we arrived at the barge harbour and hauled all of our luggage aboard the Elodie and met the crew - Zac the Skipper, Sander the chef and Nina the bike guide. When everyone had arrived, we were assigned our bikes and then we rode to the village of Damme and back to familiarise ourselves with our bikes.

Our ship mates for the next two weeks are nearly all Australians!! There are three couples from Canberra, one couple from Nerang, one man from Melbourne and three (John and his wife and sister) from Alberta, Canada. Over a magnificent meal prepared by Sander, we all got to know each other a little bit better with an ice-breaker than Nina had organised for us.

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