Europe on a Budget 2024

All good things must come to an end. We have been nomads for 73 days and there is a rhythm to our journey. Choose your travel companion wisely. I did and it makes all the difference.
So now we pack up our carry on luggage and head out to find a coffee.

There is a coffee shop/tobacco store five blocks from the hotel. We sit among locals. Our last cafe experience in Europe.

Now for the first time on this Odyssey I encountered a squat toilet. The cafe bathroom is unisex. There is a sink and urinal and a squat toilet. I had left my phone on the restaurant table so didn't take a picture. Nor did I use the facilities. My balance isn't good today. In 1985 I used a squat toilet in a French village, I am surprised they are still around!
We walk another block to a bakery and buy a baguette sandwich and apple pastry for the road.
I used BOLT to order a taxi. Just under fourteen euros.
We are in Terminal 2 - Charles de Gaulle is a huge airport. I had checked in on line so we went straight to security and then to duty free. A big bottle of rum and a bottle of tawny port. This would not have to go in our bags. On West Jet you get an overhead bag and an underseat bag.

Charles de Gaulle

The aircraft has 9 seats across in groupings of three and we had been assigned seats ten rows apart. At the gate the lady made an adjustment so we would only be two rows apart each with an aisle seat. Yes I saved a few bucks and didn't prebook seats.
Neither of us slept a wink - the flight left Paris at 3 pm and arrive in Calgary at 345 pm. Wow they served free beverages so I had a glass of red. Eventually we got a meal. I watched three movies and Jeff watched five!
Two hours before landing we got a breakfast snack. I had digestive biscuits in my purse just in case but never ate them.
Snow. We could see it for miles as we descended.
We live a long way from the airport and luckily my sister picked us up after work so only had to wait half an hour.

Now home with a stop at the grocery store where she had preordered the necessities of life, bread, milk, eggs and a few other treats. Forget A and W. We aren't going to starve. Plus my friend who had been checking the condo had texted that the water was turned back on and she had left roast beef sandwiches. We are lucky and we know it! Family and friends, the sustenance of life.
I collapsed into bed at 730 pm local time and got up at 130 am. In those quiet wee hours I had a coffee and Rice Krispy squares (thanks friend), did two loads of laundry and looked through a stack of mail.
Reality.

We travel for the freedom, the anonymity, the mental stimulation, the challenge of putting one foot in front of the other. A journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.

16,000 miles by plane, train, bus and boat in 73 days.

The End

We have one more sight to see before catching the train back to Paris.
The clock tower is just a few blocks from the Cathedral
Our idea was to have coffee and croissants at a bakery cafe but lots of bakeries are closed on Mondays.
So we started out with a coffee

and then walked past the Cathedral at 10 am. Very few people around and the Christmas market is closed. Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral over 30 times!


The church was locked up tight so we didn't get a chance to sit inside again.
It is warmer today, maybe 8 degrees and will improve later.
The clock tower

The Gros-Horloge (Great-Clock) is a 14th century astronomical clock set in a Renaissance Arch.

We did stumble upon a bakery cafe on our way back so Jeff had a delicious apple pastry and I had Apricot Torte - lots of fruit, refreshing and delicious.

Our long journey to our hotel in Paris began shortly after 1.
Only one train this time and we scored good seats


We got off at Gare Saint Lazare. Now a metro to Magenta -really big station - long and confusing walk to platform, now train to airport, long confusing walk to platform, we get off at Charles de Gaul airport and take a taxi to our hotel which is fairly close. Fourteen euro which would be the same price as the hotel shuttle which only runs limited hours and not convenient for our needs. Our room is nothing special, quite small but it's only one night and we are tired. This journey has taken all afternoon. Tomorrow we go home, tomorrow night we sleep in our own beds for the first time in 73 days.
Tomorrow night I am having a teen burger - we won't feel like cooking and A and W is close.
It will be an adjustment, hard to believe our odyssey has come to an end.
Rouen was the perfect little city for our last stop. Picturesque, historical, nice food, civilized.

Nice.

Sleeping on a hard loveseat has its drawbacks. Fun fact.
We did not get an early start but we did accomplish our sightseeing goals.
First the fine art museum which is free. Astounding. Renoir, several Monet and yes a Caravaggio - huge, many stairs although there is a lift - we walked through before our first coffee. Not easy but we survived. There are no barriers -you can walk right up to the paintings, see the brushstrokes - some of Monets works are really thick, easy to chip off a piece, but we didn't. A fine art museum and being Caravaggio fans we spent some time alone[b] with his masterpiece - it was protected by glass but most of the other works here are not.

It took us quite awhile to find the Caravaggio - the museum is huge. It's on the second floor to the right.

Now we really need our coffee - not used to this delay of gratification.

Yes I am looking a bit worse for wear, this past 36 hours has been a lot for an old girl like me. Now my back hurts because of the short bed. But we forge on to where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and I have enough energy now to act it out.


The Church of Saint Joan of Arc was completed in 1979 in the centre of the ancient market square, known as the Place du Vieux-Marché, the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy in 1431. It was designed to look like a flame as well as an upside down longship. To me it looked like a teardrop for the atrocity against a young woman.

Stained glass windows inside this relatively modern church were saved from an old church decimated by an Allied bomb in 1944 during World War 2. All that remains of that sorry church is this wall.

To add to the fun this cute little carousel is set up next to the church

It was likely a festive atmosphere way back then when crowds would gather for the great and gruesome spectacle of burning at the stake. Joan was given the opportunity to escape the purifying fire but she refused. Hers was a political execution as she had led French troops against the British dressed in men's clothing. Voices of saints had told her it was God's will that the French would succeed in the uprising. She was 19 years old when she died.

We have yet to see the River Seine which flows through Rouen. Our next stop is the Immersive Viking Museum and it's on the other side of the river.

Rollo the Viking brought his warriors to town on this very river, terrorizing the inhabitants.
As we are about to discover after some pretty bitter and violent battles a lasting peace was eventually negotiated and Normandy was formed under his rule. Assimilation occurred and the Normans - a mixture of Northmen and Franks populate the area to this day. These people of Rouen have Viking blood.
So this is a bit of a hike and stairs are involved we have a cafe break before going into the museum.

I had an orange Fanta - a common drink it seems in our travels through Europe.
Admission is about 22 dollars Canadian, mine was two dollars cheaper, seniors rate.
There are English subtitles so we are ok.
We walk back in time to the ninth Century when the Northmen, fierce plundering warriors terrorized the area. Their leader was Hrolf called Rollo -Scandinavian and possibly Norwegian according to the Icelandic Sagas. Wherever he was from Rollo wasn't wanted back home so he was compelled to find somewhere to settle down.
Charles the Simple, king of France and the archbishop of Rouen brokered a deal with Rollo - lasting peace. Rollo agreed to convert to Christianity as a symbolic gesture. He would rule Normandy and own much land and offered in return protection of the area and Paris from further Viking attacks. It was a win win situation and the Normans flourished for hundreds of years, conquering both Sicily and England for a time under the banner of Rollo descendants William the Conqueror and Roger. It seems the French embrace their Viking heritage.

Noted for its large collection of half timber houses Rouen's old town is like walking back to medieval times - a very picturesque city.

There are many reasons to visit Rouen France, a historically significant city of 650,000 and the capital of Normandy.
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen.
The Vikings arrived on the River Seine. Rollo Duke of Normandy is buried in Rouen Cathedral.
In August 1944 Canadian troops liberated Rouen.
It has an impressive amount of half timber buildings.
My granddaughter will be living in the medieval city of Rouen for several months and I want to check it out.

Our teaching English stint finished on Friday 29 November. It had been a relaxing week in one place. The location in a pretty thermal-water village allowed for short walks around the town. Our resort spa hotel had a thermal pool so we took advantage of the thermal waters Thursday afternoon. Colder than I expected but still an experience.

We got back to Madrid on Friday evening.

Since our flight was leaving at 6 am we just whiled our time away at an outdoor cafe and then took the metro to the airport. .

This was the second time on Madrid Metro that a hip hop musician set up his gear by the exit door and did a little performance. He stands by the door in case security gets on we assume. The train is packed and he makes a few euros.
Yes there were many times during the night I thought this was a tactical error. But we survived.
There were homeless people sleeping in the terminal. Two guys were really making themselves comfortable, cardboard, a bottle of alcohol and happily smoking right there on their spot in Arrivals. Security guards never bothered them. Yes there are homeless in the Madrid airport, some have been living here for years.
We arrived at Beauvais around 9 am, took a bus to the train station and then two trains to Rouen. I have always loved the train a very civilized way to travel. Today there is lots of room, the French are quieter than the Spanish, and they have spoken or understood enough English that we get on the right train and make a seamless transfer.
Beauvais
Seems to be a pretty town on the outskirts of Paris. Actually it is an hour from Paris so outskirts is an ambitious word - we chose this airport for its proximity to Rouen.

I have not stepped foot in France for almost 40 years but the countryside is familiar, green, misty, trees. The way I remember it.

Wow it's chilly here about 4 C and we aren't really dressed for it but we manage. We have a one bedroom apartment with a loveseat in the combined kitchen living room and I volunteered to sleep on the couch the first night. I figured I would sleep no matter what since I was so tired.

Joan of Arc Tower
It was here that Joan of Arc was imprisoned in December 1430 and tried from 21 February to 23 May 1431.

Joan of Arc Tower

The first day in Rouen is a Saturday and they have a big Christmas market by their Notre Dame Cathedral. Which is impressive.


Oodles of people. We never got close to a booth but we did go inside the church.

The cathedral, built and rebuilt over a period of more than eight hundred years, has features from Early Gothic to late Flamboyant and Renaissance architecture. It also has a place in art history as the subject of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, and in architecture history as from 1876 to 1880, it was the tallest building in the world. Rollo the Viking who converted to Christianity is buried here. Richard the Lion Hearts actual heart is here and quite possibly his bowels.
Rollo Count of Rouen, Duke of Normandy. 860 AD to 932 AD. Ruler of Normandy, great, great, great grandfather of William the Conqueror

We saw Rollos statue in Allesund, Norway, a gift to the city by the citizens of Rouen. Home town hero.

I have been to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris - almost forty years ago I lit a real candle and my little son wished for a dog and that his family would never die. A good wish, he has a dog.
Now the candles in most churches are battery operated and I don't feel compelled to light one.

We were taken with the wood and wicker kneeling or prayer chairs.

The Nativity Scene

City Hall in Rouen was built in the mid 18 the century as a dormitory for monks. Neo classical style. The statue is Napoleon.

Saint Louis Chapel - the first stone of the Saint-Louis church was laid in 1615 by Queen Marie de Medici. The first mass was celebrated in 1631. It is now a 600 seat concert hall.

Rouen is renowned for its impressive half timber houses - the structural frame of load-bearing timber is left exposed on the exterior of the building.

We were fortunate to be accepted as volunteers to teach English again. This is our third time - 2012, 2017 and now 2024.
We stayed three blocks from the meeting point where we caught the bus to the resort in Aragon. 24 Nov. Sunday.
We were each assigned our own rooms and they are lovely.

Lunch was at 2 pm. We were starving but will soon adjust to the Spanish schedule. Buffet style, wine included on every table, two Spanish and two English speakers at each table, this is an intense immersion program for the Spanish. Siesta until five pm followed by one on one conversations of fifty minutes each, then dinner with wine at 9 pm.
There is a huge selection of food and we take full advantage, we are eating too much but the temptation is too much for us - I am eating meat and everything available, cake, paella, fish, pasta, salads, a feast. At this rate I will gain ten pounds!
There are thirty people, the Spanish have varying levels of English proficiency, but we are not to correct them unless they ask. Mostly I would like to correct their pronunciation and enunciation but I hold off. If they ask it's a different story but you can't go overboard - maybe two or three things. They actually know a lot of words, it's not the vocabulary so much as dropping consonants. They are learning English for their employment so are motivated. I am the oldest person here and we are the only volunteers from North America this time. Lots of English and one couple from Scotland. The Spanish come from all over the country Barcelona, Malaga, Madrid.
25 Nov
Breakfast at 9 then I was lucky and had free time for an hour so I walked downtown with another volunteer. It's 16 C and a bit windy.

This village is known for its thermal waters.

Then a few sessions of speaking English, and some instruction for our upcoming telephone sessions. Talking on the phone is more difficult, no visual clues.
Then lunch at 2 - again ate too much but didn't drink any wine this time!!
The Panna Cotta for desert was so delicious!!

I stuck with one and didn't succumb to the vast array of cakes, so proud of myself!!
Really a tough gig!!
Siesta, yay!
For a true introvert like myself this is challenging. I enjoy a good conversation and socializing but I need alone time, quiet time to recover. If you aren't an introvert this is foreign territory but this is how it is for me. I can only socialize a certain amount - it's exhausting. Also dreaming up something to talk about is difficult for me as we aren't suppose to ask the three most typical conversation starters
What do you do
Where are you from
What are your hobbies make that four do you have children. Oh and no politics. Or religion.
Now I could ask do you play any sports, do you enjoy travelling, have you seen any good movies lately. Have you ever broken a bone, white water rafted or gotten lost. This is not my skill set. Obviously.
Oh I guess I could ask where they recommend I go in Spain in case I ever come back here. This is actually my fourth time in Spain. I think it's Jeffs sixth or seventh so we seem to keep ending up here.
If you are interested in volunteering to teach English google English Immersion Programs for volunteers. You need to be fluent in English and typically you would be a native English speaker meaning English is your first language. You don't need any special training but must be somewhat social and able to carry on a conversation. You have to pay your way to and from the meeting point. Your meals and accommodation during the program are covered.
You will probably need to pay for a hotel etc for at least the night before and after the program which typically runs from Sunday through Friday afternoon.
Now I have eaten a huge dinner including a glass of wine and it's 1030. Some of the group have gone off to a pub in town to play trivia. I am happy to be alone in my room, enjoying the peace and quiet.