A Walking Tour of Tours

What do you do on a "rest" day in a foreign city ? The answer is simple. First, you do your laundry and then you walk, and walk.

On yet another bright sunny day (just like every other day since we arrived in France over a month ago), i set out from my hotel with a bulging laundry bag. I was a man on a mission. Thanks to the wonders of Google Maps I had discovered a Speed King, a so-called Libre Laverie (self-serve laundromat) just a few minutes' walk away. When I got there it was empty. All I had to do was figure out how to work the high-tech washing machines. To my delight, the controller accepted coins of all denominations. That allowed me to lighten my sagging pockets by about a kilo of assorted coins. A few minutes later my laundry was happily spinning around in the machine. Just as I was feeling smug for having this procedure down pat, I realised that I had forgotten to put detergent in the machine. So, in went a few more coins and out popped a little block of soap. I found something that looked like it could be a receptacle for soap, but it might have been an ashtray and deposited the soap into it.

It seemed to work, and about 45 minutes later I had the clean washing all sorted and stacked in my hotel room. Now I really did feel smug. It was time to go for a walk. I did not have any particular plans in mind. At times like this I just like to start walking and see where my legs take me. Today they really take me on a long walk, and reminded me that walking is actually much harder than cycling.

I enjoyed a delicious Plat du Jour for lunch, served by a not so friendly waiter. It is a real pity that his service was not as good as his food. That seemed a reasonable justification for only leaving a 50 cent tip. At least he didn't manage to spill the food all over me, so I figured I owed him something. And then it was back to walking.

A few hours later I came to the conclusion that Tours would not be a bad place to live. It is pretty and clean and the history is all around you. Like all cities, Tours is not perfect and I could not help but notice that I saw more professional beggars here than it any other place we have visited so far. At least they were not aggressive.

My final stop for the day was a Starbucks Cafe. The coffee was ordinary, but at least there was plenty of it. Another warm evening was settling over the city as I walked back to hotel.Read more