Day 2 in the Loire Valley

 [30 March]

Note: go here to see the listing for our apartment.

The seasonally beautiful weather continues here in Tours, highs in the 60s, lows in the high 30s at night. Perfect for being out and about and sleeping when the time comes. 

Our Sunday morning began lazily; bodies trying to catch up to the time change while attempting to make up for the time it took to get to France. And Daylight Savings began here this morning as well!

After rousing ourselves with comforting showers and plenty of coffee -- our apartment has a coffee maker that makes it far too easy to sit and drink coffee at the touch of a button -- we headed out to explore and hopefully pick up some additional items (food and household goods) for our stay. 

We discovered that grocery shops, including the large Les Halles market, are open only in the morning on Sundays, at least here in Tours. Most retail shops are also closed.  Eateries offer a midday meal and usually close by 3 pm. Some reopen for the evening meal, some don't. Since we had dilly-dallied our way through the morning, we were out of luck in the shopping department.

Still, it was nice to be out and exploring the city. We walked down our street to rue Emile Zola and then over to one of the main streets, rue Nationale, where there is a large Monoprix grocery store as well as a Galleries Lafayette. It also happens to be on the main tram route, a service we may use at some point during our stay here.  

Along the way we saw a clothing store that immediately caught our eye. Why "Michigan"? Who knows! We'll have to stop in one day when they're open and find out.

We continued on rue Nationale heading back in the direction of the river and rue Colbert, stopping to admire the very aged character of the church of Saint-Julien.

Returning home grocery-less and having missed any opportunity for a late lunch we cooled our heels at home until suppertime. The plan was to return to rue Colbert about 7:00 pm and grab a pizza to go at L'Ile aux Pizzas, a place that first caught our eye the day before. 

We returned to the pizza parlor, placed our order and, while we waited, strolled over to Saint Gatien Cathedral, which was closed for the day. We hope to return on Monday to visit it and perhaps Saint Julien as well.

We left the Place de Cathedral, picked up our pizza and headed back home for dinner.

this is a pizza oven!

As odd as this may sound we ordered a calzone pizza with ham and eggs. It was delicious. 

Tomorrow we're off to the TI office, Les Halles, Monoprix (maybe), the Cathedral, and who knows what else?