We pay €20 each month for SIM cards. Jeannie has one in her phone. I have one in my phone. And one lives inside our router. (While most home routers are connected by wire to an internet service provider, that option does not exist on a boat. Fortunately, there are now routers that accept a SIM card.)
For €20, we get 100 GB of data. We consider that a real bargain. Back home in Canada, I pay triple that price for just 6 GB of data per month. Canada’s cellular-phone service is probably the most expensive in the world.
Netflix uses 3 GB per hour in HD (even more in 4K). Back home, one 2-hour HD movie would use up an entire month’s worth of data. Here in France, we can watch 33 hours of HD movies before we reach our limit. Switch to SD, and we’d use 1 GB per hour – or 66 hours of movies per month.
Even so, we have found ourselves exceeding our monthly data cap. It hasn’t been a big deal. We have so much data left on our phones, we just stick one of our phone cards in the router. Jeannie and I both know the phone number for the router’s card so we can still phone and text each other. But anyone trying to phone the number we have given them would get the router. (And it doesn’t say anything.)
At €20 per month, we decided it was worth buying a second SIM card for the router. When we run out of data on the first card, we’ll stick the new card in.
Of course, that meant traveling to a FreeMobile location to buy the card. The closest location, in Dijon, is closed due to Covid. The next closest is in Besançon – a city we hadn’t been to. It is 62-kilometres from Auxonne and has a population of 117,000.
And like every other town and city in France we have been to, it was a delight to visit.
And like many of the spots we have enjoyed so much, cars are banned in the city centre. It’s block after block of pedestrian-only streets.
At first glance, one might wonder where to park. We have discovered that in France that is never a problem. From large cities like Paris and Bordeaux to much smaller ones such as Besançon, underground parking is ubiquitous. And spotless. If only city planners from Canada could come and see how it can be done. The beautiful heritage buildings are saved. There are no ugly street-level lots. And merchants don’t have to worry about a lack of parking driving customers away.
Serendipity. Much to our surprise and delight, it turns out that Besançon lies on the Canal du Rhône au Rhin. As you may recall, it begins not far from Auxonne and is our Number One choice for cruising this summer – Covid permitting.
We went had a look at the lock. It’ll be a challenge for two reasons.
First, it’s fully manual. We will have to open the lock gates. If they’re closed when we arrive, Jeannie will have to, somehow, get off Aleau before we get there and then walk over to the lock and crank open the gates. Once in the lock, one of us will crank open the sluice at the bottom of each gate. It allows the water to pour in and fill the lock. But that means the other person will have to hold onto the rope we have passed around the lock bollard and keep tension on it and pull it in as Aleau rises in the lock. Then, after we leave the lock, Jeannie will have to go back and close the gate – and then climb back onboard.
The second challenge – getting into the lock. It looks only inches wider than Aleau – and, in fact, is only inches wider. It’ll be a tight squeeze – but then all the locks we will have passed through before Besançon are the same size so we should be used to it by then.
Just before the lock is a marina. A bit of a disappointment. Aleau is way too big to be able to moor there. We left Besançon feeling a bit discouraged about that. We really like the city and would like to spend a few days there.
We should have walked a few more feet along the Doubs (the river the canal enters immediately after the lock).
Back home onboard Aleau, I opened Google Earth and looked at where we had been. Just around the corner from the lock (and that way-too-tiny marina) is a very long pontoon. It even appears to have electricity and water. Serendipity – again.
We are looking forward to summer and cruising to Besançon and beyond.