Tours, France

Tours! Our hours of tours in Tours...or as the French would say, “To! Ou urs to da To.” or something that only involves pronouncing a few of the letters. Why use them at all?

Our hostess, Michéle, has spoiled us. She provided enough (farm-sourced) produce, honey, goat cheese, etc. to have breakfast for a week. Our gîte is a stone house in her garden and is one block from the train station, but dead quiet. 

We are in the Loire Valley, or Valley of the Kings...which looks much like the Kings Valley in Oregon, but with Chateaux. No wonder the French revolted. Many of these 100-room second homes were never used or only used once. Insane.

Today, we visited Chateau du Clos Luce, Leonardo da Vinci’s final home. It was a humble chateau with beautiful gardens located in Amboise. John was in heaven studying the many scale models built from LdV’s designs. What a genius! 

All has been great except for some issues with technology which seem to have been fixed, and credit card fraud, that turned out to only be on John’s card so mine will still be paying bills while we are gone. Whew!

Now, if I could only sleep between 1:30 and 5:00 am. Any tips for beating jet lag? We are walking 6-8 miles a day and no caffeine. Still awake.

OK, blogger absolutely sucks on a mobile device. I can’t modify photos or see what I am posting beyond two paragraphs, so if everything is funky, I apologize. I will let you figure out which pictures go with which commentary.

Tours’ City Hall (Hotel de Ville)

Baguette vending machine at the train station. Hot and fresh anytime!

DaVinci’s bike and spring-powered car)