Old town and its old houses
Cathedral
Autumn light
11th century church
The old brown bear
Flamingos!
Nice garden to sit in the sun and eat...
CAKE!!!!
Ultimate cheese!From Bordeaux we headed further inland toward Paris to Tours. Pronounced ‘Tour’, the French seem to have a thing about not saying the last letters so Paris is said ‘Pari’ and Tours ‘Tour’. Tours is said to be the place where the purest French in the world is spoken, they say that because it is in the middle of France so doesn’t have a north accent or a south one… so it must be the purest! Besides that it is a town that is used as a base to explore the Loire Valley which is full of stunning Chateaus, but unfortunately of which we didn’t see any.
To keep up the good form Andrew wandered for over an hour to find the hostel, although this time it was not a problem of street signs just an issue of left and rights and written instructions, oops. The hostel when we did find it was pretty crud and is a part of Youth Hostelling International, and as we weren’t a member we had to sign up for an extra fee to be allowed to stay. So in the last hostel we stay in we become year long members to be able to reap the benefits of discounted accommodation around the world… sweet deal! Only a little too late to be of any use.
We had just two nights so spent our time exploring the town which was actually really pretty, with a nice river running through and some really old houses and big cathedrals. The hostel we stayed in housed a bunch of international students studying French at the local University (being the best place for French), after playing a crazy version of snap with them they told us a few things to check out around town, namely the Botanic Gardens where they said there was a bear and flamingos!? I was a little dubious as to what would really be there.
That morning we woke up to a chill in the air, the beginning of the end of the nice warm summer, or actually more like the end. We rugged up and headed out, we found some neat little shops and scoped out some presents, and found one of the cathedrals with a nice garden which we frequented in our short stay. Wandering a back street after lunch we found a little cake shop with the most amazing cakes and goodies really reasonably priced so we justified a treat and took a rich chocolate mousse cake back to the garden we found, mmm it was too good!
After a cup of tea in the hostel we headed off to find the Botanic garden. Wow it really did have a bear and flamingos! The garden itself was not anything special but it was more like a zoo. It had an old arthritic brown bear in a sunken concrete compound, he didn’t look too excited about life and it was a bit sad to see. There were also wallabies, emus, the biggest variety of ducks we had seen, turtles and tortoises, goats and a donkey and flamingos! It really was true.
The next day we had a bit of time before our bus came so we managed to go out and buy the presents, visit our garden and also sneak in a bit more cake, this time with photo evidence.
To keep up the good form Andrew wandered for over an hour to find the hostel, although this time it was not a problem of street signs just an issue of left and rights and written instructions, oops. The hostel when we did find it was pretty crud and is a part of Youth Hostelling International, and as we weren’t a member we had to sign up for an extra fee to be allowed to stay. So in the last hostel we stay in we become year long members to be able to reap the benefits of discounted accommodation around the world… sweet deal! Only a little too late to be of any use.
We had just two nights so spent our time exploring the town which was actually really pretty, with a nice river running through and some really old houses and big cathedrals. The hostel we stayed in housed a bunch of international students studying French at the local University (being the best place for French), after playing a crazy version of snap with them they told us a few things to check out around town, namely the Botanic Gardens where they said there was a bear and flamingos!? I was a little dubious as to what would really be there.
That morning we woke up to a chill in the air, the beginning of the end of the nice warm summer, or actually more like the end. We rugged up and headed out, we found some neat little shops and scoped out some presents, and found one of the cathedrals with a nice garden which we frequented in our short stay. Wandering a back street after lunch we found a little cake shop with the most amazing cakes and goodies really reasonably priced so we justified a treat and took a rich chocolate mousse cake back to the garden we found, mmm it was too good!
After a cup of tea in the hostel we headed off to find the Botanic garden. Wow it really did have a bear and flamingos! The garden itself was not anything special but it was more like a zoo. It had an old arthritic brown bear in a sunken concrete compound, he didn’t look too excited about life and it was a bit sad to see. There were also wallabies, emus, the biggest variety of ducks we had seen, turtles and tortoises, goats and a donkey and flamingos! It really was true.
The next day we had a bit of time before our bus came so we managed to go out and buy the presents, visit our garden and also sneak in a bit more cake, this time with photo evidence.
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