To Tours

September 18, 2024

We’re meeting Susan for lunch, so we get our morning calories in early by heading out to the bakery on the corner when it opens at seven. We walk the entire way, which doesn’t sound so special except that it includes four levels of the spiral staircase both ways because the elevator is still out of service this morning - which brings a groan from me, thinking of hauling the panniers down when we check out.

Breakfast though is good - fresh pastries and cafe au laits - and we’re back in our rooms at about eight.

Rue de l’Universite, from four floors up.

We haven’t booked anything, so the plan is that Susan will walk over early enough for us to prowl the streets for an attractive menu of the day when restaurants open around noon. She actually arrives closer to 10:30 though so there’s time for a work session she and Rachael have planned. Rachael packs up and heads downstairs at 10:30, but I stay in the room for nearly another hour - partly to complete my post of our trip to the emergency room, an event I want to get down before the memory fades - but also holding out hope that the elevator will be back in service when I leave, which it is, a fact that cheers me up considerably.

Rachael and Susan are just wrapping up when I make it down. Susan’s been coaching Rachael on how to use the Doctolib app, because Rachael needs her own trip to the doctor. we haven’t talked about Rachael’s health for a few days, but it’s evolved. Her cough is virtually gone but it’s been replaced by a new symptom - she has an earache. She tried treating it with ear drops she got at the pharmacy for a few days, but now it’s affecting her hearing so it’s obviously time to seek help. In fact this added one more bit of black humor to our ER adventure - another thing that made the walk home in the dark so quiet is that there wasn’t much chitchat - she can’t hear too well, and I can’t talk too well. We’re hoping to find something she can make an appoint to so we can avoid another trip to the ER.

First though, we’re in need of food, and a chance for a delayed celebration of Susan’s birthday. We leave our baggage with the front desk and then head out on the street and stop at the first reasonable place we come to. The meal isn’t the most exciting, but it makes a good spot to sit and talk for the next hour and a half. Not enough of course, but we take what’s on offer and are happy with it. We enjoy a ranging, upbeat conversation that turns at the end to where and when we’ll meet again. It won’t be in France this year because she heads home soon - but we’ve got some ideas we’re excited about.

She smiles when she tells it, but it must be a pretty sad tale.

So that’s it. A far cry from what we envisioned for our time with Susan way back when this tour started, our tour of Yorkshire scrapped when we realized we needed to slow down our pace considerably and when Susan decided she shouldn’t pass up the unique opportunity to see Paris during the Olympics. And for that matter our tour of Extremadura with Suzanne and Janos was curtailed by Suzanne’s illness. Disappointing, but enough to reconnect with our good friends. We’ll do better in the future.

Outside our hotel, leveraging the glassy wall of this huge van.

Thumbs up! Hitchhikers, sweet biker chicks, girls just looking for a good time, or Thelma and Louise?

Our departure for Tours begins at the Gare de Austerlitz. The ride there is almost a mirror of yesterday’s ride to our hotel: 2.2 miles, flat, on bike lanes nearly the entire way. Today’s is even better though, with nearly a straight shot down the boulevard lining the west bank of the Seine with the Île de la Cité to our left as we pass through a series of iconic sights: a string of thrilling sights: Pont Neuf, the booksellers, the spire of Saint-Chapelle, Notre Dame. It really is thrilling, and such a splendid way to see it like this, relaxedly biking in this wide pedestrianized lane. What a gift to the city and its visitors!

A progress report, after five years. Maybe they’ll be done the next time we return.

Our journey to Tours is a two parter: first an express regional to Orléans, the closest point to Paris on the Loire, and then a second one southwest to Tours. Each is roughly an hour long. Easy.

Except it isn’t all that easy getting on the Orléans train, which is huge - maybe fifteen cars - and looks like it is nearly full. A huge crowd, and we’re all walking to the departure gate at the same time because the gate isn’t announced until twenty minutes departure. It’s really a crushing scene, and we’re pretty much at the back of it because the announcement comes right when we arrive. I really wish now that we’d thought to have the GoPro on, but it got packed away when we arrived at the station.

The tail end of passengers heading for the departure gate. There must be hundreds of them.

It’s really stressful when we reach the train and try boarding with the bikes. The first car we come to is a biker, but the bike space and all the floor space around it is filled to overflowing so there’s no way we can cram ourselves in too. The second and then I think even the third is just like this. All three cars allow bikes, but they’re all already beyond capacity. So we’re getting anxious.

There’s another lone woman with her bike on the same mission, and she’s getting stressed too. At each door we’re turned away from she starts running down the platform trying to stay ahead of us to increase her chances. I’m not sure, but I think she may have squeezed into the third car.

Finally we find success in the fourth car. The bike room is empty even though the car itself is nearly full so we take off the panniers, hang our bikes, and take our seats. And then relax for the next hour as the train races south.

It’s a pretty madhouse scene in Orléans too, because its the end of the line and the whole mob gets off here at the same time. It’s fine for us though. We have time, so we just wait until our car empties and we have the space to ourselves.

The train to Tours is much more relaxed. There are far fewer passengers, no other bikes that I can recall, and we just lean ours against the wall still loaded. Easy on, easy off.

It’s about six when we arrive in Tours, and soon we’re in front of our apartment building. We pick up our keys from the cashier at the nearby Carrefour Express, lock our bikes in the garage, and then climb up to our unit - which we both take an instant dislike to. Its unfortunately another of those places where we should have studied the photographs before booking.

We’ll be staying here for three nights, with thoughts on what to do next depending on our health and the weather. No need to go into that here though. Might as well save something to talk about for tomorrow.

Today's ride: 3 miles (5 km)
Total: 3,799 miles (6,114 km)

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