Un Tour à Tours!

15th century Cathedrale

This past weekend I set my sails down the Loire river and visited a city called Tours. Can't exactly say why I had chosen this city as it is not a huge tourist destination, inhabiting only about 150,000 people. The Loire Valley has a lot of chateaux that really are magnificent, but I was only able to see them online as its necessary to have a car or take a bus tour to visit them. I didn't let that fully distract me from my objective as I left Saturday morning and returned only Sunday night. I've been traveling using this carpooling website that allows me to search for rides to and from places. Its really quite easy to use and not only saves money, but allows me to meet frenchies and work on my social skills (lots of work to do there).

Inside the cathedral.

So I arrived ready to spend a weekend alone in a city I knew nothing about. One of my rising interests is French history and thanks to a class that I have, I am learning how occurrences from over 2000 years ago have an impact on culture here now. This gothic style cathedrale is only from the 15th century (only, haha) and it really was impressive to stand alongside. I found myself to be one of the only tourists this weekend as France finally left its summer weather and found cold, rainy and foggy weather to be a daily occurrence. This may have allowed me to have access to better photos.

Chateau de Tours

Although I am hoping one day to blog about some real grand chateaux, for now I have the meager one shown here. Chateaux (x makes it plural) became popular in France during the Renaissance period (16th century) when the French were battling the Italians and found out how nice looking their Castles were and decided that they would try to be pretty as well. This area is between Nantes and Paris and since the English had been occupying Paris (100 years war), the French royalties resided here and then remade all the castles into chateaux (ok so chateau is castle in french, but they turned the chateau fort into chateau, voila).

Place Nationale (lots of shopping)

Place Plumereau (Medieval buildings)

So I made my tour based of sites I found online and just a broad curiousity to see the structure of the city and how it compares to others that I've seen. Another aspect of cities that I'm discovering is the proudness they have in their parks. Nantes has a great 'Jardin des Plantes' and Tours had one that I was very happy to have spent time in. They had animals, plants, and flowers from all over the world. Some giant redwoods from northwestern USA, wallabies from Australia, Emu from somewhere, etc.

Jardin Botanique

By the time I left Sunday, I was really happy with what I had gotten to see. I did however have to lecture myself on taking more care of where I stay. I picked perhaps the worst location for a hotel. I found a cheap one online but didn't realize the journey I'd have to take to get there. It didn't do much harm though and maybe staying where it was warm to relax my legs did some good. I definitely appreciate the journey and the experience and I look forward to my future destinations!

Palais de Justice (left), Hotel de Ville (right)