There’s something about sleeping on a boat. It’s the rocking, of course, and the sound of the water. It’s also the cocoon effect of containment in a small space tucked away from the world. I’m not talking about cruise ships and luxury yachts here. I’m talking about a vessel that gently rocks, just enough to let a person know she’s not on dry land. If you suffer from seasickness, this could be an issue. As for me, I never sleep better than I do on a boat.
Now imagine this boat is docked in Paris. You wake up to a view straight out of a French movie from the 1950s and finish your day under a full moon.
In June I got to experience that (all but the full moon, but more on that later).
My fixation was not a recent one. I’d been eyeing boats — specifically péniches, riverboats used originally for commercial purposes — for more than 30 years, as long as I’d been visiting Paris. Then, at a party in Paris last fall, my last night in the city before heading home to the United States, I met a Dutch couple — Jan and Lydia — who invited me to their péniche for a drink.
Docked along the Right Bank — midway between the Pont de la Concorde and the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor — my new friends’ péniche sat in the middle of my favorite city, but in a world of its own, away from traffic and crowds. As perfect a combination as I could dream up.
The evening was warm. We sat on the deck as Jan set out wine glasses and a bottle of Champagne. Across the water, the Eiffel Tower sparkled.
“If you ever hear of someone who might like to rent their péniche for a week or two,” I said, “let me know.”
A pleasant level of funkiness
It turns out that you can, in fact, book a Parisian péniche on Airbnb and Vrbo (prices range from under $100 a night for houseboats a few miles outside Paris, in locations like Neuilly-sur-Seine, to $500 a night or more for a luxury péniche in central Paris), as well as through various rental agencies in the city, including Paris Attitude and Bookahouseboat.com. But before I had time to research these, my new friends made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“When you come back you can stay with us,” Jan said.
In June I returned to Paris. In the months since that fall evening on Jan and Lydia’s boat, I’d had plenty of opportunities to imagine the scenes of warm nights on the deck, Champagne in hand.
But on this June day, it was raining hard when I arrived, the wind whipping off the water.
My Uber dropped me off on the busy thoroughfare directly above the quay where Jan and Lydia’s péniche was moored, which required me to haul my suitcase down a set of steps to the water. A small price to pay.
The péniche was one of a dozen or so lining the riverbank — most roughly the same size, a little over 100 feet, some appointed with cafe seating and planters, children’s playthings (deck space sufficiently open to allow for a tricycle or two), pergolas, and in one case, an amphibious car.
But though a few of the boats appeared to have been elaborately renovated, most conveyed a pleasant level of funkiness.
Watch your footing
My dream of staying on a péniche is not one shared with everyone who visits Paris, or lives there. Even though it costs less to live on a péniche than it would to occupy a space of comparable square footage in one of the better arrondissements in Paris, many Parisians view the vessels as more trouble than they’re worth. And it’s true: All that character and romance requires a certain level of open-mindedness, possession of a baseline level of handy skills, a willingness to come face to face with the elements and sufficient agility that navigating the deck on a windy day won’t put you off.
In most areas where péniches are docked (including my hosts’), they’re lined up in rows two boats deep, which means that to step onto the vessel on the outside edge, a person has to walk across the deck of the boat pulled up alongside the quay, and then it’s a quick hop across a wooden platform. If you don’t feel like taking a dip in the Seine, it’s a good idea to watch one’s footing. For me, all of that was part of the adventure.
A person unfamiliar with péniche life might imagine small, cramped spaces inside, but the boat belonging to my Dutch friends felt nearly as expansive as a New York City loft — with a kitchen large enough to accommodate a couple of cooks at once, extending out to a dining and living room area, bedrooms at either end, two bathrooms and an area where a captain might sit, if the boat were actually traversing the river, as this one no longer did.
In the old days, when péniches and barges were used to transport goods up and down the river, smaller boats often pulled them — or animals did from the riverbanks. These days, most péniches stay docked, though sometimes their owners haul them away in the off-season for repairs.
A different aspect
In addition to the built-in bed, my room housed a drum set and a couple of guitars (owing to my friends’ participation in a rock band), along with a desk. From the bed, I could look out across the water to the Assemblée Nationale and a row of other buildings along the Left Bank. But the best view was from above.
We’re speaking of the deck, the most important element of a péniche experience. Some péniche owners cultivate elaborate gardens — lemon trees, roses, planters of vegetables — but the main attraction of a péniche deck is how it opens up onto the city’s skyline. Over my many trips to Paris, I’d never beheld what I did from the deck of that boat: an utterly unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower.
The morning after my arrival, I woke to rain, and drank my coffee from the enclosure of the small captain’s cabin. Next morning, more rain. I ventured out anyway, crossing one of the many bridges spanning the Seine for croissants and a baguette.
Back on the boat, there was a little gas stove in the living room. My hosts and I turned it on.
As things worked out, the rain held for the entire week of my stay. But once I let go of my romantic dream of clear and balmy evenings looking out over the water, I was able to embrace a different picture of my time on the péniche. As much as my little cocoon bed sheltered me from the weather, something compelled me to venture out on the deck every night, even when the rain was pelting down its hardest, and the water was dark and choppy. This, too, was Paris. Just a different aspect.
I made it my tradition every evening of my stay to close out each day on the boat by looking out to the Eiffel Tower — one rare constant in this turbulent and shifting world.
One night the fog was so thick it even obscured the lights from the tower, but I could still make out its presence, along with that of the last bateau mouche (each one named for a French movie star from times gone by) transporting passengers from one end of the city to the other.
Bundled up in my friend’s rain jacket, I considered what a gift it was that I could stand under the night sky, rather than staring up at a hotel room ceiling. Somewhere up there, under the clouds, there were stars.
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