Blogs from Tours, Centre, France, Europe - page 3

Day 14 and this is 2 weeks away....... A day in the Loire valley doing the castles here. But first things first - washing. Find a coin laundry very close tot the hotel we are staying and all systems go, until we can't read the instructions..... Luckily the man in the adjoining laundry (think he runs both) gives us change for the machines and smiles - most of the time. While we wait, we drive to a little village not too far away and get a coffee and drink for me from a bar (at 1100) - no beer but tempting. This with some nice chocolate croissant and other pastry thing for Chris and we are back to the washing. After many requests for change to fill the machines, the washing is completed and we are ... read more

Monday was a day off and time to recover. We spent the morning relaxing at Christine's. Pierre-Louis and Clementine came over for lunch. It was good to meet Pierre-Louis and find out more about the family. He works in his father's packaging business. Clementine works for Xerox selling industrial printers in the Orleans area. They have long lunch breaks but work from early to late. It seems that lunch at Christine's is a regular occurrence. In the afternoon Dianne went for a long walk around the neighbourhood and I went for a long bike ride along the south back of the Loire. The bike trail runs atop an embankment which passes through farmland, across bridges over small tributaries and on to other towns upstream. On the return I discovered the L'ile Charlemagne (Isle of Charlemagne), which ... read more

today was another lazy day in tours. the only thing on the agenda was to move from hotel Mecure to Relais St. Eloi which was a 5-10 walk. as i had to be out of the hotel about 11 and had my backpack with me i went back to the park/gardens i had found yesterday, found a park bench and read my book till 2pm when i could check into the next one. after i had done that i went for a wee walk around the town again, just meandering. at 6pm met the lady who was in charge of the cycle tour we were doing, she had a wee yarn and then took us to our bikes. there was 3 other people doing the same tour as me, a german couple and their daughter (17ish) ... read more

after a good sleep i skyped mum and dad which was nice. tthere was a bit of drissle this morning but was still really warm, itcleared up about 10 and the sun came out for a really warm day. after talking to mum and dad i went down to the lobby and had a lovely breakfast, it was a buffet style breakfast with lots of choice and most of it was reallly yummy. after breakfast i went for a walk to the catedral Saint-Gatien. they had amazing stained glass windows there, i didnt stay for too long because after a while the cathedrals all look sort of the same. after the cathedral i went for a walk through all the shops and down a few streets. had some lunch and had a nice relaxing afternoon. Tours ... read more

Today we went with Phillipe to tours. We arrived in Tours around 12 so we meet up with Nicole (Phillipes partner) and had lunch. We had lunch in this really nice and sunny outside area with heaps of other restaurants there as well. The only bad thing about it was that there was this really really drunk homeless man who kept going up to people and when he was near us he was trying to kiss everyone and he couldn't even walk properly and I'm surprised no one did anything although in France there are no alcohol bans like in some places in New Plymouth. After lunch we went shopping down the main street in Tours. Then we went back home and had tea. At 8pm we went to a guitar concert in Vendome that Phillipe ... read more