Tours

I totally forgot my camera, again, this weekend

I just got back from another traveling weekend (my feet are really itchy this month--I am going to be going here and there pretty much every weekend until the middle of January, if you count going home to CA).  This time my wanderings took my to the city of Tours.  I like to think of myself as living in the Loire valley here in Cosne--and, indeed, I am right on the river--but Tours is in the valley proper, if you think of it as the place of expensive wine tours, medieval towns, and chateau that inspired Jean Cocteau and those crazy kids at Disney.

Minus the wine tours, which will have to wait until my ship comes in, I think we did a pretty good job of touring Tours.  I say "we" because I went with Therese, one of my fellow English assistants of the Nièvre.  We were only there for less than 48 hours, but in that time we managed to fit in tramping around the old-section of town--which is, as you can see, medieval and very nicely preserved--going shopping at the Christmas market, visiting a proper chateau, going to the local musée de beaux arts, and eating some really fabulous local food...

It had been very wintery for the past week or so (in fact, I had almost no students on Friday because the buses were not running and it was snowing like crazy) but fortunately we were still able to use the tickets we had bought in advance, and our train Friday evening was only slightly delayed.  It is now raining sloppily, and the weather was warm enough over the weekend that everything was sort of drippy, but that did not prevent it from being very picturesque.

Saturday afternoon we took another train outside of town to visit the local Chateau de Chenonceau.  Actually getting there was something of a misadventure, since we were just settling into our seats on the train when I looked at the guidebook and read the fateful words, "The chateau of Chenonceau is not to be confused with the village of Chenonceaux..."  Chenonceaux was of course where our train was heading.  Therese and I hurried off the train and went to ask the station agent which route we should actually take, and he assured us that we should, in fact, take the train to Chenoneaux.  We rushed back, only to have the doors slam in our face and the train pull off without us.  Turns out the chateau of Chenonceau is in the village of Chenonceaux.  Poor wording, Lonely Planet; poor wording.

so all these lovely pictures are courtesy of the internet!

When we actually got to the chateau by the next train, and hour later, it was quite lovely. The village was even smaller than Cosne, so the chateau was pretty much just surrounded by its own fabulous gardens, stretching out into and blending with the forested countryside.  As I said to Therese, I felt as if we should be strolling through the grounds in riding habits with our dogs, or else rattling up the long tree-lined approach in a gilded coach.  It was very "to the manor born."  The chateau itself was pretty impressive, since it is built actually on the river Cher, with a long, black and white paved gallery spanning the waterway.  The alternate name of the place is the "Chateau des Dames," since it is famous for having been the residence, and the design project, of a number of powerful women, including Catherine di Medici, who ruled France as regent during the minority of Henri III, and Madam Dauphin, a great salon hostess and society leader during the revolutionary period.  The whole place was very well-maintained; historically restored, but not to the point where it felt like a theme-park.  It was especially nice to be there when it was decorated for Christmas, since many of the rooms were filled with great aromatic bouquets and buckets of dried orange slices, cloves, and other spices.  The downside of going to such a fabulous and touristy place is, well, the tourists, though.  Therese and I had the misfortune to arrive at the same time as a huge bus-full of Asian tourists, which was a little overwhelming.... Even after years of dealing with crowds in New York, it is still a challenge to fight through them when you are on a spiral staircase!

The one part of the experience that was not crowded was the musée des cires, or wax museum, which was hidden off in a side building, away from most of the tourists, attention.  Therese and I went over to check it out before we left, and the whole thing was, as you might imagine, totally creepy.  There were no human attendants, just an automated turnstyle that let you in after you swiped your ticket, and then motion sensitive lights and music that played as you inspected half a dozen degenerate wax recreations of the various famous residents and visitors of the chateau, including such luminaries as Rousseau and Voltaire.  You could totally imagine them coming to shuffling life and chasing unsuspecting tourists through the woods.  "The return to nature," indeed!

After we finally got back to Tours that evening, we had dinner at a place called "Comme AutreFouée" (since bad puns in restaurant names apparently are not limited to California) which specialized in the local dish, a sort of little flatbread called les fouaces, which is baked in a wood-burning oven and then brought hot to your table, where you cut it open, put in butter, meat, or vegetables, and eat it immediately--yum.