Holidays in August - Paris to Tours

Our holiday finally arrived and we were off to Tours. I was very tired on Friday night but I thought it would be best to leave for our holiday then rather than to go Saturday morning. I always find it difficult to get up early on a Saturday and so we probably wouldn't have left until lunch time. That would have been a waste of the very little time we had so we headed to Tours at 7pm Friday night.

I took to national roads to avoid paying any tolls. This is much better if you want to see the countryside and small villages as well. It got dark quite early so we didn't get to see that much though. We arrived in Tours at 11pm, checked into some crappy Ibis hotel and went to bed. It was early and normally I would have gone for a walk to check out the city but it was pouring with rain. There was no way I was going to go out in that weather so that was it.

We normally stay at Accor hotels because Ferbent gets a 50% discount there but some of them are really rubbish. The older ones are terrible and some of the newer Ibis hotels have the smallest rooms you'll ever see. Nevertheless, it was cheap.

The next day we got up early and walked around the old city. Tours is typically used as a base for holiday makers to see the surrounding chateaux, of which there are many. There isn't much to see in the city itself. For us though, it was just a stopping off point on our way to south west France and Spain.

Tours is a very small city but it was very pretty, as most French towns and villages are. The Hotel de Ville was beautiful and was surrounded by flowers and water features. The old city has tiny pedestrianised streets, perfect for exploring the little shops. Most were closed due to the August holidays, when most of the country is on holiday. It seems strange that they do this seeing there are a lot of foreign tourists in August. They must be losing a lot of money by closing up shop for a month. It's typical of the French though, they don't like to work too hard.

Tours has it's share of gothic churches and other elaborate buildings. There were some gorgeous parks with typical formal displays of flowers, lawn, and hedges. It was very peaceful. I really wanted to spend time exploring the neighbouring chateaux but that will be another trip.

It was then off to Bordeaux...