Day 10 Thursday, September 7, 2023

The countryside during our drive to Rouen often reminds our of back home in Alberta. Rolling hills, farmers fields, crops ripening…. except that we have no idea what these towers are, there are mile long stone walls around farmers fields, and I wonder what the giant tubes of paint are about?

This street is the highway to Rouen.  The buildings in the villages are so old, and so interesting.  I wish I had time to stop and draw some of them.

We see a sign on the highway for the Sainet-Marie church in Vexin and decide to visit it. There is reconstruction work taking place on the front of the church.  We have seen a lot of church reconstruction taking place on this trip.The church is old and has interesting side aisles with wooden beams and ceilings.  As we were leaving I managed to somehow spill most of my thermos of hot tea all over our iPad!  The iPad seems OK, but the keyboard case I think is toast.  Not very happy about that…

We see the first of many wind turbines, and a lot of houses and farms have solar panels installed.

We stop for lunch in a beautiful town called Ville de Fleury Sur Andelle.  There are flowers planted everywhere.

They also have bee houses for wild bees.

Did you notice the Swiss chard planted in this flower bed?

We arrive in Rouen, and check into our apartment. It is really cute and comfortable looking.

So…we decide we will go get some groceries…was that ever a mistake.  Google maps  instructions are lagging a bit behind where we are, which causes some issues, then the road we need to go on is blocked by a huge crane and a bus in an underpass, so we have to go a different way.  It is a nightmare, we keep somehow missing the correct road.  Due to the lag in directions we miss making some of the correct turns,  and some of the directions try to take us down a one way street!  We finally find a spot to pull over and regroup.  We have tried to get to three different grocery stores with no luck whatsoever, so we go back to our apartment, which is also a bit of a challenge.  Not sure we have ever had so much trouble navigating and driving anywhere!So, we have toast, plums and a banana for supper, and lucky Bob gets a hard boiled egg

It has been long day and we are both exhausted. Oh, and did I mention that it is 34° today?