Touring to Tours

Saturday and we are enroute to Tours - around 225 kms.  Before we hit the road properly, we backtracked to a town called Saintes to see a Roman Ampitheatre constructed in AD 50.  It was a surprisingly interesting sight - simple but quite stunning.

We were on the A10 motorway for most of our journey.  You really eat up the kms at 130 kph!  Every 20 or so kms, there are rest areas with petrol stations, eateries or picnic areas.  We had a nice lunch at one of these, then paid our 18! euros toll charge.  I read that the 925 km trip from Nice to Paris is estimated to use 70 euros worth of fuel and incur 69 euros of toll charges - that puts it in context somewhat!

As you might expect, we popped off the motorway to see a few things (read chateaus!) on the way.  We did drive-bys on two then visited Chateau Langeais.  The chateaus of the Loire Valley are not so old as in the Dordogne and are generally furnished to give some context to the rooms.  This one was good and had lovely gardens, so worth a visit.

Hitting Tours at 5.30 pm on a Saturday, we thought we'd be ok, but no, another nightmare in traffic and narrow streets.  The situation was complicated by the fact that the hotel has no parking of its own, so you need to find a public park nearby.  Not the easiest on a Saturday night in the city.  Finally sorted, and wheeled our suitcases half a km to check in.  No lifts!  Lucky we are only on the second floor.  Our room is quite small and once again involves a bit of contortion to negotiate your way around the bed.  It's most obvious feature is that every (without exception!) floorboard squeaks - no sneaking off to the loo in the night without waking the neighbours!!