We puttered around Tours our last morning. We watched some bike racers participating in the “Paris de Tours”….I had it in my mind it was a race similar to STP but going from Paris to Tours, which would be a reasonable distance. We watched the finishers come in, oddly, always in groups of 8. All men, never saw a woman. We wandered backwards along the race course and discovered, not far, a start point. Hmmmmmm. Very confusing. The best I could figure is that they were doing trials of sorts, sprints, maybe to qualify for the actual race, or maybe that is all it was……a sprint race. We may never know…..but that is probably why the guys at the bar the night before told us it was a boring race. And we thought they were weird………..
And so our confusion continues. Some things we just never seem to understand. Like the security system at the hotel, the multiple ways of flushing a toilet, seat assignments on a train, the cost of a taxi, the closing of stores in the middle of the day and how to ask for ginger with our sushi. I like trying to speak in French though. I might not do it well, but if nothing else, it is always entertaining…….I did get a train ticket for the wrong day because the ticket person thought I said Sunday (dimanche) instead of tomorrow (demain)……luckily I caught that one and we had a good laugh. I can ask for a room and find a bathroom and order most foods etc and have limited conversation in French…..I don’t have too much trouble reading it, but can’t understand the TV much at all. I was so proud of myself today to go into a bookstore, ask for books written in English and understood her response when she told me they only had travel books in English, no literature, Yippee! A year here and I would be good!
Anyways, we checked out of Tours, saying goodbye to a lovely town, and headed out on the train towards Montpellier in Southern France. This was the funny train seat experience. We had finally figured out about assigned seats and how to find them when the French changed the rules! Molly and I were comfortably settled in our seats when someone asked us to move. They had the same seat number that I had…..weird……so after much confusion, both in French and English, it was determined all the seat assignments had shifted and were posted in the front of the car on a simple piece of paper….like we would know that……..we moved and then hysterically watched as one after another, other passengers had to move and figured out the changes……it was like musical chairs.
We stopped in the city of Toulouse for a quick overnight before travelling on in the morning. They call Toulouse the “Pink City” because of all the brick. Personally, I would refer to it as the “Orange City”, but I wasn’t around when the name was picked. We had a good nights sleep, lovely walk around in the rain in the morning and got back on a train to head further south.
And so our confusion continues. Some things we just never seem to understand. Like the security system at the hotel, the multiple ways of flushing a toilet, seat assignments on a train, the cost of a taxi, the closing of stores in the middle of the day and how to ask for ginger with our sushi. I like trying to speak in French though. I might not do it well, but if nothing else, it is always entertaining…….I did get a train ticket for the wrong day because the ticket person thought I said Sunday (dimanche) instead of tomorrow (demain)……luckily I caught that one and we had a good laugh. I can ask for a room and find a bathroom and order most foods etc and have limited conversation in French…..I don’t have too much trouble reading it, but can’t understand the TV much at all. I was so proud of myself today to go into a bookstore, ask for books written in English and understood her response when she told me they only had travel books in English, no literature, Yippee! A year here and I would be good!
Anyways, we checked out of Tours, saying goodbye to a lovely town, and headed out on the train towards Montpellier in Southern France. This was the funny train seat experience. We had finally figured out about assigned seats and how to find them when the French changed the rules! Molly and I were comfortably settled in our seats when someone asked us to move. They had the same seat number that I had…..weird……so after much confusion, both in French and English, it was determined all the seat assignments had shifted and were posted in the front of the car on a simple piece of paper….like we would know that……..we moved and then hysterically watched as one after another, other passengers had to move and figured out the changes……it was like musical chairs.
We stopped in the city of Toulouse for a quick overnight before travelling on in the morning. They call Toulouse the “Pink City” because of all the brick. Personally, I would refer to it as the “Orange City”, but I wasn’t around when the name was picked. We had a good nights sleep, lovely walk around in the rain in the morning and got back on a train to head further south.
