Tours

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Our shift to Tours went just fine. Our train (for which we had reserved seats this time) left at half-past noon. We went to the market again. Ile de Re' is right by La Rochelle, and is a famous site for sea salt. We needed to bring some home.....

We found lots of salt, we admired all the fruits & veggies (cheeses, sausages, honey, fish, etc) at the market, but did not buy any, and took a last look at the postcards.

Our new friend Chantal insisted on driving us to the train. We met her at noon, and said our goodbyes near the train. After riding airplanes, airplanes, airplanes, it seems odd that any random person can walk out to the train with you. No ticket checks, no id to be shown, no passing through security.....

We bid Chantal a fond goodbye, with promises on all sides to keep in touch, and boarded the train.

France has fast trains, and this was one of the fast ones. It did make several stops, so the travel time was about 2.5 hours. It didn't go straight to Tours, so we had a 5-minute ride on another train into Tours. That train was there and waiting for us when we arrived.

In the train station we booked our seats to Paris for Saturday.

Then we walked to our hotel, which is 15 min or so from the train station.

There are more half-timbered buildings here than anywhere I've been so far. At one point in the restaurant last night I forgot we were in France (thinking we were somewhere different where I don't speak the language (Switzerland? Austria?) and began to address the waitress in English. Ooops. :-)

Despite my inability to understand more than 10 or 15% of that "Un Gars et une Fille" video I posted the link to a couple of weeks ago, I am comfortably able to make myself understood most of the time, and can even understand the answer most of the time (though a smaller percentage!). Further questions lead to more understanding......

Time to get ready to head out, find some pain (pain = bread), find the tourist office, and see about visiting a chateau or two, and perhaps a wine spot or two.....



In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.

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