September 19, 2008

Wake-up call 7 a.m., bags out and breakfast 8 a.m. and departure at 9 a.m. We would make our way Tours. Tours is a very modern city as 80% of it was destroyed during World War II. Our first stop during our drive to Tours was at the town called Chateaubriant. The town was called this due to a chateau located there that was owned by the Briant family. The cut of meat that we associate with that name was named for a writer with that last name. Susan our guide told us he liked that particular cut of beef so much they named it after him in his honor. The name stuck. After our bathroom stop at Chateaubriant, we continued on to Angers. Angers was the home base of the Counts of Anjou. It has what is called a chateau but is really a very large fortress. The walls are particularly impressive. I had a nice lunch at a restaurant called Le Gourmand. They had reasonably priced salads there. After lunch, Harvey and I checked out the cathedral which had a very large organ and a lot of impressive wood carving. We arrived at the Holiday Inn Tours City Centre at 4 p.m.

The Holiday Inn we stayed at was decent. It has a good location if you're traveling to Tours by train as it's located right next to the Tours train station. Right next to the train station are a number of shops so the hotel isn't far from a number of good shops in Tours.

This night, we had an optional dinner at a restaurant called La Cave. It's a restaurant located in a cave. One thing I try to do on Globus tours is try new foods. France is famous for its escargot i.e. snails. I was determined to try snails though I'm not real keen on eating bugs and, I considered snails bugs. We were given a set number of choices for our meal. We had 3 choices for starter, 3 choices for main entree and 2 choices for desert. For the starter, I chose the snails. I was glad I did as they were outstanding. They had a fantastic sauce as well as onions and mushrooms. The lamb I ordered was a disappointment as it was dry. For dessert, I got to try baked Alaska for the first time. I thought it was really good. Overall, I had an outstanding meal at this restaurant and, I'd definitely recommend it.

After dinner, we drove back to the hotel. The next day, we'd have a full day as we would get to see 3 famous chateaux in the Loire Valley. Stay tuned.