Touring Tours

With the sun not rising until 8:43 am, you need a little extra incentive to get out of bed at a reasonable hour. The pastries from the pâtisserie Nuances definitely do the trick. Of course, with pastries like these just minutes away, lots and lots of walking is the order of the day. So we’re off to see more of Tours!

The cathedral of Saint-Gatien (aka Cassian) is extremely ornate on the front and one side. But they ran out of steam (or money?) on the other side. Perhaps they were spending it all on the stained glass, which is magnificient.

Music was playing as we entered. A number of the churches we’ve visited have played recorded music but we were treated to a full organ concert here. The organist was practicing all sorts of music and that is definitely an organ worthy of a cathedral. What a treat!

I really appreciated the explanations of the stories told by the stained glass. All churches should have this! If only M had brought his binoculars – those windows are really high up…

We’ve seen lots of buildings with figures holding up protrusions. Many look pretty unnatural, but these fellows on city hall look like they’re up to the task:

We’ve been to two free concerts. One was at the conservatory for adults and featured students and professors playing four-hand piano, singing, and (our favorite) a string trio playing Beethoven. The second was a chorale with various age groups singing separately and together. Delightful! And most impressive – everything they sang was in English (with a little Latin thrown in). That was just after the Frenchwoman sitting next to me told me how bad the French were at speaking English… We’re glad we stayed to hear it. When we got to the church about thirty minutes before the scheduled start, there were only a few people in the pews while the choirs warmed up and no one else was coming in. Was there really going to be a concert or was this just a practice night? Turns out the free paper M read had the wrong start time listed and we had to wait an extra hour. Ah, well, at least it wasn’t the wrong day, though more walking is never bad (see pastries above).

Of course there has also been plenty of eating! From left to right below: fish and lobster sausages (with roasted squash with citrus, sesame, and fermented apricot far in the background); creamy root vegetables, roasted squash, vegetable leather, and truffle cream; and a dessert described as “pralined chickpeas, hazelnut puff pastry and artichoke confit” (with M’s cheese plate in the background). Chickpeas and artichoke in a dessert? That I had to try. It was delicious! (Another dessert had celery confit.)

And just like good eating in France, there’s also always more stained glass. Here, it’s in Église Saint-Julien.

Our walking has taken us to several gardens, where a few flowers continue to bloom even though it’s December.

We visited the other part of the Christmas market, which has just rides and food stalls.

Do children really want to ride demonic horses?

When we were at the Christmas market in Montpellier, I saw something called aligot. It was super-stretchy, making me think it was just straight-up melted cheese. No, thanks, I didn’t need a big bowl of cheese. But afterwards I did some research and found out it’s actually potato puree, cheese, cream, and a little garlic. That sounded more interesting, so I was keeping an eye out… and yippee, found some.

It may not be all cheese, but it’s still incredibly rich. Eating just half of the ‘small’ serving was more than enough.

To round out our walking (and slow it down to a shuffle), we checked out the Musée des Beaux Arts.

I’m a fan of these florals on black backgrounds. If only I was talented enough to paint that on a tabletop…

The most normal looking Madonna I’ve ever seen

These are cool. They took BCE Roman busts and dressed them up in marble.

Yes, I’m a nerd… I got all excited when I saw the painting above because we’d seen a painting of the same story (Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis) in Vienna: