Chenonceau, Amboise and da Vinci's house

This morning we wandered downtown Tours, with stops for small quiches and apple pastry for breakfast and bread, cheese and an apple for lunch. We went into the main cathedral which was very impressive.

After lunch we took off on our minivan tour to the chateaux at Chenonceau and fortified castle at Amboise plus a tour through the house where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life (he's buried in the castle in Amboise.

There were 7 of us plus the driver in the minivan. It cost 29 euros each plus admission fees of usually 7.50 euros at the 3 stops. Chenonceaux was the home of some French king's (Francis II?) favourite mistress in the 16th century. Part of it spans the Cher River and it has amazing gardens and rooms. Amboise is more of a fortified castle on a high hill overlooking the Loire River, also very impressive but totally different. There are 250 big chateaus in the Loire Valley, one of which is owned by Mick Jagger. He's often seen in the town of Amboise because he lives here 2 months per year. I bet when he hears we were here he'll be sorry he missed us.

Leonardo's house is smaller but also interesting. IBM put up the money to build models, some full size, of many of his inventions. He was one smart dude.

By the time we got back we had seen enough castles for the day (it was 33C in the shade). We wandered down some tiny side streets until we found a restaurant that looked good. Anita had smoked duck breast, gizzards and foie gras while I had a big smoked salmon and shrimp salad. Along with 2 glasses of wine for Anita and 2 beers for me the total came to only 40 euros, which we thought was a pretty good deal compared to what you can spend in Barry's Bay for a meal that's not nearly as good.

Tomorrow we hit the trains almost all day with a short jaunt from Tours to St Pierre de Corps, a longer high speed train to Bordeau, another to Irun at the border with Spain and then a short jaunt on a Spanish train to San Sebastian. We booked Saturday and Sunday as well at a different hotel in San Sebastian so now we'll be there for 4 nights. The world cup game on the weekend should be interesting.

First day in France

It's almost 9 pm of our first day in France. Anita is trying to sleep. It's been a good but long day since we only slept about 2 hours on the plane last night.

Our flight was about an hour late taking off but nevertheless we arrived without incident at Orly airport near Paris at about 9 am. We flew on a Boeing 747 which is a very big plane. Customs was no problem but it took awhile for our luggage to arrive on the conveyor. I guess with about 400 or so people on the plane it's a lot of luggage.

Orly airport is quite busy but eventually we figured out how to catch a short monorail shuttle to a subway station and then take 2 different subway lines to Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris, where the TGV (high speed) trains depart for Tours and points south. When we got to Montparnasse and figured out which office to go into to activate our rail pass, we discovered that the TGV train to Tours was fully booked today so we had to take a city bus from there to Austerlitz station where the regular trains depart for Tours. At least we got our pass activated and then took the bus and through much traffic got to Austerlitz. We arrived just in time to hop on a train for Tours at 12:30. It's very cool with a pass on regular trains. You just get on, find a 1st class car and a conductor comes along sometime to check your pass. As it turned out the whole train was 2nd class but we had one of those old fashioned compartments all to ourselves (see picture). Anita was pleasantly reminded of her first trip to Europe 37 years ago.

After a pleasant air conditioned ride (it was blazing hot through all this city stuff), we arrived in Tours about 2:40 this afternoon. I immediately went into the ticket office and got a reservation for the TGV train to the border with Spain near San Sebastian, where we're going on Thursday. While I was in the office, Anita sat with our packs outside. A young woman came up to Anita and asked her to watch her pack while she went inside. She looked kind of sketchy so Anita said no. The woman left the pack anyway to one side of her. Meanwhile another young woman who didn't look much better came up and sat right beside her on the other side, even though there were lots of empty benches all over. Anita thought the whole thing might be a ploy to distract her from her own bags so she wrapped an arm through both travel packs and both day packs (which we had been carrying separately). Pretty soon both women collected their pack and disappeared without waiting in line like me in the office at all. It seemed likely that Anita was right and they were just trying to distract her and make off with some of our luggage. Anyway, it didn't work.

This time I got a TGV reservation so we're all set for our next move. Then we went to the tourist info office and booked a half-day mini-van tour tomorrow afternoon to 2 big castles, one of which goes right over a river, and to the house that Leonardo da Vinci lived in near the end of his life. So tomorrow we're going to go up to the Tours cathedral in the morning and then take the castle tour in the afternoon. The next day we'll be on the train, with 2 changes, on our way to San Sebastian for 2 days.

We got to our hotel at 4 but it was closed until 5 so we came back then, registered, got our room and had a shower. That was welcome. We just went out and had a light dinner in an outdoor cafe nearby and went for a little walk (the picture is Anita in downtown Tours) but we're both really overtired.

Today had its difficult moments but we just took it in stride and it all worked out, even in the heat. I didn't even swear or consider strangling anyone, if you can believe that.

Blog test

Well, as suggested last night at our dinner party, we've created a blog for those who might be interested in our travels this summer. The title was suggested by Linda DeLuca but was already taken by some other Anita so we had to add the "b" to the url. I'll add a picture just for this test. Here's Anita at an Algonquin Park "hotel" last summer.