We caught our train at ten, and despite the fact that it was crowded and the seats we were assigned were not technically together, or even in the same car, we managed to get two seats together and keep them up until our stop at St. Pierre des Corps. Camille picked us up at the station and we went back to the house for lunch with the rest of the family. I finally met the infamous Louis and found that his English was quite good-- he has more of a Scandinavian accent than a French one, which I suppose makes sense since he learned English in Finland, but still struck me nonetheless. He and I served as the main translators, though Dad and Catherine managed to talk a little in German and completely confuse the rest of us.
After lunch we went into town and Camille, Louis and I showed Dad some of the essential markers of Tours-- the Studio Cinema, Place Jean Jaures, the Rue Nationale, Place Plumereau, the Loire, etc. At Place Jean Jaures we unexpectedly found some of Louis's friends, so we went out to the Gangette with them for some drinks. The Gangette is a kind of bar on the banks of the Loire which only exists in the summer (literally, not even the stand is there in the winter or spring) and just opened up on the solstice, presumably. It's been coming and going for two years now and seems pretty popular; even on a Wednesday afternoon there were a good few people there. By the time we said goodbye it was about time to go to dinner, so we walked around Place Plume for a while to waste time until Catherine arrived from work. We had dinner at a little creperie just off the square, and it was delicious. I had a crepe with escargot inside, which is among one of the most sublime things I've eaten; everyone else at the table took it as a sign that I've become too French for my own good. For dessert people ordered a number of wonderful crepes that looked (almost) too wonderful to eat; mine was with two scoops of ice cream (one vanilla, two chestnut) with chocolate sauce and almonds. Also among one of the best desserts I've had. I need to find chestnut ice cream and take it home with me. As much as possible.
Thursday:
We went on an all-day expedition with Camille around the area fairly close to Tours. First of all, we stopped at the park center where Camille had her internship a while back, and sought recommendations of where to eat lunch. After that, we went to a little trogolodyte cave/museum for a specialty called 'pommes tapées,' which literally means hit apples. That's fairly descriptive of them: they're skinned apples dried at an extremely high temperature to remove all moisture, and then smashed on two sides with either a hammer or an elaborate machine for this purpose in order to fit better into jars to be preserved for the winter. They're then best served warm with cider or wine serving as a kind of sauce, which is more or less how we tasted them (except that there were cinnamon and cloves added, too).
After that we drove for a while and found the lunch spot that Camille's old supervisor had recommended. It was absolutely delicious. The entire meal was centered around the regional bread specialty, called fouées: they look kind of like hollow rolls, and are served warm with butter, rillettes, or anything else that strikes your fancy. At the restaurant they had the butter and rillettes as well as a main course of duck with white beans and salad, with crème brûlée for dessert. This is not even mentioning the cheese-stuffed mushrooms as an 'amuse-bouche' (appetizer before an appetizer, which I'm forgetting the name of in English) and the wines (côté de Lyon as an aperitif, and a regional red wine that I can't remember in specific which was also very good). So we left very full, but very, very satisfied.
After that we headed out for the last excursion of the day to the Château de Brézé, which is unique among the châteaux of the Loire for having been built halfway underground. The tour we took was exclusively through the underground section and it was really interesting. It was completely unlike any other château any of us had visited. Some of the stranger things: for all the defense systems, it had never once been attacked, and the moat, as deep as the ground-level château was high, had never been filled with water. Certainly unique, and worth the visit.
After a brief stop in Chinon for some macarons and a pie made with wine jam and pears, we headed back to the house, where we had some guests over for a little party. All in all a pleasant evening. I didn't have to translate much in the end because Dad spent most of the party talking to some friends of the family who spoke very good English, so I spoke in French with the people at my end of the table. It was a really wonderful evening, to have my two little worlds collide like that...
Friday:
In the morning we took a long walk around Mettray to see its infamous "Stonehenge," which is actually called the Dolmen or the Fairy Cave. We had lunch with the family, ratatouille à la mexicaine (which is to say, with green chile added), which was very good. Dad said goodbye to Catherine and Lea, and then we headed into town with Louis and Camille to do a little gift shopping. Louis bailed fairly early (he'd already made plans to meet up with his friends), but Camille stuck with us to the end, which is a good thing since she was our ride to the train station. We found more or less everything we were looking for and all of it more or less fit, which was good. We made it to the station with time to spare, although our goodbyes were rushed since we were trying to look for two seats together and Camille was so busy trying to help us that she nearly stayed with us to go to Paris; she made it out just before the doors shut. The rest of the ride was quiet, though; I watched Lost and Dad wrote some postcards.
Back in Paris, we picked up some cheese at the cheeseshop by John and Sophie's apartment, and then had a sushi party. Even if it wasn't as good as the restaurant back in Albuquerque that I love so much, it was definitely very fun to make.
And that was it for the stay.
I'll catch up the weekend and the past two days later; I'm halfway cooking dinner as I write and now everyone's come back, so I figure I should get off the computer and be social, as well as attend to the pot of rice-tomato-stuff that's currently boiling. And it's not a bad stopping point anyway.
Bye for now!
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