Light Day in Les Andelys: November 12, 2023

After the long, grinding day yesterday, today has been quiet and relaxing. Les Andelys is a small town in Normandy with a population of about 7,000 people. It’s most notable sight is the Château Gaillard, a medieval castle sitting on a hill high above the city. The Château, which is in ruins, was built in 1196 by Richard I, King of England and feudal Duke of Normandy. Or so they say. I didn’t walk up the hill because it was so steep. Doug took some pictures.

The other excitement of the day was that this morning, we had a cooking class by the chef on how to make Tarte au Citron, or lemon tart. The chef declared them quite easy to make, but of course he was trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. The difficultly level was out of my wheelhouse, but I did save the recipe if anyone is interested (Mary?). I did learn a new cooking term, “blind baking,” which is simply pre-baking the crust before you fill it. He also told a funny story about a lady who complained that the microwave didn’t work in her stateroom when she tried to heat up some soup. There are no microwaves in the staterooms, so they decided she was trying to heat her soup in the in-room safe. Does not surprise me at all.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was Bob’s story, one of our fellow travelers. His father was on Normandy Beach on D-Day, his grandfather was in WWI and his great grandfather was in the Spanish American War. Bob was in the Navy but did not see combat. He was probably in his late seventies, and visiting Normandy Beach was on his bucket list. I thought it was pretty cool that he was able to travel all of this way to see it.

So, we now have four shipboard friends that we will probably never see again after Tuesday: Laurel and Kevin (Florida), and Sherrie and Fred (Texas). Laurel and I went browsing today in some of the little shops in town and she told me that she and Kevin would like to visit us sometime in Georgia. She rambles, so it was something like “We would love to visit you all sometime in Georgia because Kevin and I both really like you all. That is, if you want us to. Kevin is really a lot of fun.” It kind of took me off guard, so I just smiled and nodded. She is quite endearing, but she talks nonstop. And I do mean nonstop.

Extra stuff: All of the tour guides in these small towns say that most of the people who live in them commute to Paris for work. I believe it because the towns are mostly deserted during the day. There are commuter trains in most of the towns. Tomorrow is the day that Doug supposedly gets his phone back from Franz, the honest phone guy. Will keep you posted. And finally, after some serious eavesdropping on my part, we met two couples from Kansas City tonight who have a second home in Sunrise Beach. They were kind of loud, so were probably from the Kansas City, Kansas side.