Today’s mission was a bus trip into one of the bigger cities in the Loire – Tours. We’d been told by Jean Claude at the B&B that parking could be a bit of a nightmare, and that the bus from Loches to Tours was much easier than trying to work around the infrequent train schedules.
After breakfast, we made the brief walk up to the train station to buy our bus tickets (not the most intuitive situation, but there you have it) and soon after, boarded our bus and were away.
The ride took about 40 minutes and dropped us off at the train station in Tours. Not far from there was the tourist info centre, where we collected our always useful free tourist maps and headed for the sights of Tours.
Tours features many boring and not memorable streets, but a few fantastic mostly pedestrian streets which are lined with ancient (and occasionally not so ancient) buildings. It’s a university town, so the average age is somewhere in the early 20’s and everyone seemed to be having a good time. It certainly would have been a different university experience than we had in Canada – wine and/or coffee in a café in a square surrounded by medieval buildings seems so much nicer than in the Student Union building.
It was almost lunch by the time we ended up getting to Tours, so after a brief wander to get our bearings, we found a decent looking crepe place in the main square in the old part of town and sat down for a very tasty lunch. The threatened rain managed to hold off and when the sun ended up coming out, it turned out to be quite warm.
After lunch, we felt that we should explore some more, and so did just that. It turns out there isn’t actually that much that’s vastly interesting in Tours, outside the medieval pedestrian bit, at least that we could find. We walked through the covered market, but as it was after 2pm by this point, it was almost entirely closed (as was to be expected). The rest of the streets we found looked like French city streets everywhere else, so we turned back into the medieval section.
Having been slightly disappointed by the rest of Tours, we felt that an ice cream was the only way to regain our equilibrium – at least this was the excuse we used this time (I can almost always find an excuse for ice cream while on holiday). Unfortunately, the ice cream alone didn’t quite do it and we were forced to find a bar back in the main square and have a very relaxing time drinking a carafe of wine in the sun.
I mentioned the sun there. The forecast had been for cloud for the day, and potentially heavy rain. We’d both brought our umbrellas, and in the morning I had been kicking myself for forgetting to bring my sweater along as well, as it was a bit chilly. By the time 3pm rolled around, the sun was out and it was warm. Given the forecast, neither of us had thought to put sun screen on, and I managed to get quite a good sunburn on the back of my neck. Not bad enough to be excruciating and therefore worthy of any sort of sympathy, just bad enough to be annoying (in my house, no blood or no bruise equals no sympathy. Unfortunately I’m enough of a walking disaster area that I end up getting quite a bit of sympathy, even given the rules).
Feeling sufficiently relaxed, we thought that we should at least look at the Tours cathedral before taking the bus back to Loches. It turned out to be stunning. They had the most amazing stained glass windows, and unusually, almost every one of them had a big plaque explaining what each pane was depicting. It was interesting to be able to read the description and then look up at the light pouring through to see what the artist had intended all those hundreds of years ago.
The bus ride back was relatively uneventful, other than a slightly crazy, smelly, and very greasy-haired older French guy getting on at the second stop and sitting next to the young guy directly in front of us. This wouldn’t have been unusual, except that the bus was more than half empty. The poor young guy had to move his bags, and then deal with the old guy moving around, trying to get the air vents to work, farting (which we had to deal with as well sitting directly behind him). To add insult to injury, the old guy almost wouldn’t let the young guy out of his seat at his stop. Very bizarre.
Back in Loches, we stopped in at the B&B to freshen up and have a quick chat about the day with Jean Claude. I didn’t feel like driving for dinner (the few carafes of wine throughout the afternoon having something to do with this) so we made reservations again at the golden wheat sheaf (of course the name is actually in French, but I forget what it is – that’s just the translation), having had such a good meal there the other night.
Unfortunately history didn’t repeat itself for once. Our starters were good – eggplant and goats cheese for Jamie and confit duck and foie gras terrine for me. Jamie’s main course was also excellent – a special of the week of guinea fowl and local white asparagus. Mine, however was not so good. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I ordered it.
Grilled sea bream with the skin on, paired with chorizo and tagliatelle is not a natural combination. I could have lived with this, if it weren’t for all the little sharp bones which had been left in the bream, or the countless scales which had not been removed from the skin. I ended up leaving two of the three fillets on the plate (picked through the first, made an attempt at the second, and didn’t bother with the third). The pasta with chorizo had also been sitting for a while whilst we finished our entrée so it was a bit manky by the time I got it, so didn’t actually eat that much of that either.
I think the servers didn’t quite know what to do, as they kept walking past our table, refusing to make eye contact. The pile of bones and scales on the side of my plate was fairly obvious, as was the amount of food left. Eventually one of them took courage and asked if we were finished, and cleared. Interesting, no one asked if we’d enjoyed it.
Oh well, not all meals can be winners. After a final coffee, we came back to the B&B to settle in for the night. Our last day in the Loire was very nice, and I think we’re going to be sad to be leaving. On the other hand, we’re very much looking forward to the next leg of our grand French adventure – a journey into La France Profonde – Deep France.
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