Rain and some more rain

When it rains it pours as the saying goes and today is sure has been pouring down the entire day. I hope this ends soon as we would like to have nice weather for our visitors arriving tomorrow. Now that Sweden is sunny and warm we have the crappiest weather here.  

Yesterday we were out for a drive and ended up on some small narrow and winding roads (the in built navigator in our car just is not very reliable and will sometimes take you on journeys you did not quite expect). This time we ended up driving past some really beautiful places as we crossed one of the mountains surrounding Basel. Suddenly we were in what is called The cherry blossom valley. I only had my phone with me so this is the picture I got but I still love the dramatic dark skies, the clouds hanging low in the air and the cherry trees among the green hills.

Saturday morning I decided to visit the local market in the neighboring town of St. Louis in France. Every Saturday morning there are plenty of local markets going on. You have to go there kind of early so you have to give up sleeping in if you want to visit the market. Here you always have Sundays for sleeping in as everything is pretty much closed on Sundays. 

 I love visiting fresh markets like these ones. This particular Saturday it turned out they had closed off a bigger portion of the city and extended the market. Beyond the regular, fruits, veggies and flowers there were plenty of stalls selling clothes, hats, shopping bags, cleaning products ect.

 My favorite part is still the regular produce section. Love buying locally and being able to pick and choose among all the fresh fruit and vegetables.

The poultry guy was there with his rotseri chickens. He has his potatoes going on under the chickens, no butter needed as the chicken fat keeps dripping down on to the potatoes. It smells delicious as you pass anyway.

 French pastries, such as croissants Almande. A quick picture as they just seems to lie there calling out to everyone that passes by in a dangerous way.

One of the last merchants that I passed was this spice section. They just had all of these great and amazing spices. Large pieces of cinnamon bark so large it really looked like bark that had been scraped of a tree. I wish I had been able to linger more and just look and take more close ups but I was not sure I was allowed to photograph so I moved on.

What are you up to? Enjoying vacation? Or having something else to look forward to?