July 14th Bastille Day    The heat wave had taken full hold in France by now, plus we’d seen and done most that there was to see and do in Tours. So my suggestion that we just hang out in the apartment until the National Day activities would get underway at 6:00 p.m. that evening was […]

“A day about nothing “ Carol has a word for a particular kind of dilapidated, decrepit or substandard look to a place. The word is “skeevie.” She originally applied it to some of my choices for accommodations on our first overseas trip together. I’d gotten in the habit of procuring accommodations that were thrifty and […]

“Birthday girl” Originally, we planned to leave for France on Carol’s birthday. We pushed the trip up to the 4th, when neither of us felt like being part of a 4th of July celebration that seemed to be celebrating the birth of a MAGA demon child. Even though the France trip was the birthday gift, […]

“Moving day”    Monday marked our first glorious week in the quaintly, bustling yet pastoral, half-timber, medieval town of Tours. It was also moving day to our new air conditioned apartment in advance of expected 100 degree temperatures. It was also laundry day. Living like the locals.    It was also living like the homeless, as we […]

“Pointillist picnic”    Of all the sightseeing I would just as soon avoid, cathedrals are at the bottom of the list. With castles and chateaux, you’re forced to walk through drawing rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, studies with endless displays of tapestries, depicting deer hunts and oil portraits of useless dandies and wretchedly spoiled children. To me they’re […]

Meatballs and nightcaps    Saturday morning it was my turn to wake up with a start. “It’s eleven o’clock! I gotta get up!” I jumped out of bed, and started putting on clothes.”    “Where are you going in such a rush ?” Carol asked, still sleepy eyed. (Yes, we were still lounging till nearly the crack […]

“Chenonceau, a toughening labor of love”    Carol hoped the history of the chateau as a one time home of French kings and even Catherine de Medici would lure my interest in the tour. I gave it my best, but twenty minutes in I was hoping the joint would suffer a structural calamity that would […]

“The way the locals do it”    Of course, the secret ruse behind the concept of “living like the locals” is that you wake up in the morning with nothing more staring you in the face to do than what does when you wake up as a local in your own hometown. Since for me […]

“Before Sunrise: The reality show”    The theme behind this trip was that we’d find a small city or town in France, and then go there to live like the locals for two weeks or so. That meant an apartment instead of a hotel, and shopping for meals to cook at home, joining café society […]

   Our itinerary had us flying first to Atlanta before boarding a 10:00 pm overnight to Paris. Then a bus into the city from the airport, a taxi to the train station for the little more than one hour high speed train to the city of Tours, our home for the next two weeks. We […]