Life: a love story: chapter 70: TOURS

I just want to say, that concidering everything that happened today, I think it went pretty well...

We took the metro to the train station and caught the train to the Tours train stop. We got out and began looking for "National Car Rental" to pick up our rental car. Looking... Looking... No where in sight. We did find a kiosk in the train station that had a few auto rental services, but unfortuantly it was closed and didn't open for another 30 minutes. Our specific car rental agency wasn't listed, but we thogught that was a good place to start. After sitting and waiting the 30-minutes at Avis a man came in and unclocked the door. I'm not sure how it happend, but somehow, another customer got ahead of us and had an endless list of questions. She asked every single one very apologetically while we tried our best not to stress out.

Our turn! We showed him our recipt for the rental car and asked if we were in the right place. He then proceeded to ask for our train ticket and then opened our eyes to the fact that there are TWO train stations in Tours and we were at the wrong one. There were only a few trains leaving the station that day that headed directly to the other train station so he helped us find the right platform. Luckily, there was a train leaving within the next hour for the 2nd train station. We caught that train and settled in for the long ride to the other station. Literally 3 minutes later, the train conductor announced that we had arrived.... so basically in the hour plus that we were waiting in all, we could have walked to the other train station and saved some time. Ah well...

We found National Car Rental service and picked up our rental car. Not too long after getting in the car though, we realized we had no idea where we were going and were only supplied a regional map. The only thing on my list for the day was "go to Tours and see castles!".... nice. So, take all of that and add the stress of driving in France and you've got two people about on the edge.

Despite everything, we had a pretty smooth start and found our way to the freeway. The first chateau on the map was impossible to find. We went in too many circles to count and I'm pretty sure half the roads were one-way and we absolutly went the wrong way. We made a gut decision to turn down a very narrow road last minute and ended up scratching the hub cap... on the rental... in France. Jeez. We decided we would think about that later.

Finally we found it - Leonardo Da Vinci's Chateau. We walked up the hill to the back of the line and waited. I decided to exlore while Ben held our spot and came to the sign at the enterance - this Chatuea was not free. At all. Line + Cost = heading back to the car. We tried to sneak a peak to see what we could, but not enough to make all that hassle worth it.

We then drove out to the farthest castle because it got the best reviews and looked the biggest. We finally found it after a lot of winding, weaving and just being plain lost. This was it! Louis XIV's hunting lodge. That's right, this wasn't even a normal home - this was a hunting lodge that was used probably only once. We stopped just outside the enterance to eat our sack lunch and then took a self guided tour through. We walked through each of the hundreds of rooms and had fun on the famous double spiral staircase.

{first sight of the lodge}

{our homemade lunch}

{double spiral stair case.. two separate entrances on either side and neither staircase connects}

{I can't remember what he said, but Ben was making me laugh so hard I started to cry}

After touring the hunting lodge, we drove straight back and dropped off our rental car just in time to catch our train back to Paris. We ended the night by slowly and sorely walking around our neighborhood, stumbling upon a beautiful garden, and stopped at our favorite fondu resturant {our second time dining there}.