Good European City for Boat Shopping?

[KathleenCalifor]

We've been lurking on the Forum for awhile now. Like many other lurkers, we've been nurturing a dream of buying a boat when we retire and cruising for at least a few years on the canals and rivers of Europe. Eight years to go. This summer we are renting a boat in Ireland and cruising the Shannon/Erne waterway for a month. We've done a shorter version this trip before. Highly recommended if you like drinking, music, and conversation. Anyway, we have two weeks at the end of our trip currently unscheduled. One of the things I've learned in this forum is if you want to buy a boat you should go look at a ton of boats for sale. See the range of what's out there and such. My husband and I would like to do that, and I'm looking for recommendations on European cities that might have a good inventory of boats for sale. I figure we'll ultimately need to avail of the services of some sort of boat broker, but right now we have a general ignorance of what's out there, what prices, etc. Any recommendations are appreciated.