We were excited to head into Tours and see what it had to offer. As I said yesterday Tours does not get much love in the tourism press. Most guide books either don’t mention it or give it a passing glance. For this reason we had missed it in our past travels thru France.
Tours got off to a good start because the first person we met from Tours greeted us with a big smile, patiently helped us get our bus ticket sorted and smiled again when he handed us our change with a jolly Merci. It’s funny how encounters like we had with the bus driver can set the tone for a day, and a visit.
Our first stop was the Vieux-Tours which is a section of the town that contains one of the largest collections of half-timbered buildings in France. It is also an area full of cafes and shops. But, probably because tourism is not a big thing here the shops are real shops aimed at selling to people who live here and not people passing thru. It makes for a very different dynamic, and a much more interesting one.
We decided we would return to the Vieux-Tours for lunch and headed off for the Roman ruins. I always assumed that Tours had something to do with towers as the French word for tower is Tour, but I was wrong. Apparently it is a corruption of Turonus who was the brother of Brutus who died fighting for Rome in France and is supposed to be buried here. It became a Roman town in the first century AD. It became an important part of Roman Gaul for several hundred years and had one of the largest amphitheaters in Gaul. I punched Roman ruins into the GPS and we set off on a 20 minute walk. At the end of the walk we were directed down a road to a wall and told we had arrived. We walked around the wall to the other side and found the front of the wall. This was the Roman ruins. The wall was part of the fortifications of the city during Roman times. While it was a nice wall it only took us a couple of minutes to decide to move on.
Our next stop was the Les Halles de Tour, which is the central food market. But on the way we came across the Cathedral of Tours.
The Cathedral of Tours was started in the 1200’s and completed in the 1500’s. We have seen a lot of Cathedrals on our travels, and have gotten a little jaded, but something about this Cathedral appealed to Ton. She spent about 20 minutes walking around the square in front of it and photographing it from various angles and asking me about features on it, some of which I could answer (who new that after a few years looking at cathedrals in Europe I would know what a flying buttress was and could even give a coherent explanation of their purpose.)
The interior is relatively unadorned compared to many of the other Cathedrals we have been in, but we kind of liked that. But the stained glass was very beautiful, and what made the windows even better is each window had a detailed explanation pane by pane of the story contained in the window. It really was well done and helped us understand better the religious story being told by each window.
As we walked by the side of the Cathedral Ton noticed the gargoyles. Ton loves gargoyles so I lost her for another 20 minutes while she shot pictures of the gargoyles. While I was standing there I noticed one of the gargoyles was mooning the town. Apparently in the middle ages stone masons were a rowdy lot and would hide little protests in their work. This is the second Cathedral we have seen a mooning gargoyle, the other was in Freiburg Germany. The story there was that the town council had a meeting with the stone masons to tell them they were disappointed with the quality and the speed that the work was being done on the Cathedral. A couple of days later a very quickly carved and highly detailed gargoyle was produced mooning the building that the town council worked in. I wonder what the story is here.
The market hall was supposed to have a great selection of local foods, including a large area devoted to mushrooms. Ton was very excited to see what would be on offer, but we forgot about the French lunch. When we got there it was basically shutdown as all of the food sellers had closed for the customary 2 hour lunch.
A little disappointed about missing the hall we decided to join everyone else for lunch. We had passed by many restaurants just setting up when we arrived. This time when we headed into the Vieux-Tours, they were all doing good business. We had spotted a cute looking cafe in the morning and headed back to it for lunch.
While most of the cafes were busy when we arrived there were only a few customers at the exterior tables, and one other couple inside. We sat down for a three course set lunch. The ambiance of the place was great with everything you could ask of a French restaurant down to the red checked table clothes. Unfortunately, the food was mediocre. The sparse crowd should have been a warning to us. We were a little disappointed but we enjoyed the atmosphere and the service was good.
After our three course meal we took a little stroll down the Rue Nacional looking at the modern shops. Part of the reason the Rue Nacional is so straight and the buildings look so modern is that Tours was heavily bombed by just about everybody who had bombs in WWII. The Germans leveled much of the old town in 1940 when they invaded France. Then because Tours was a major transportation hub the Americans and British leveled the area around the train station to restrict the Germans transfering troops to Normandy during the invasion. As a result much of the town had to be rebuilt after the war which resulted in straight streets and some areas of the town seeming to be on a grid pattern like in the US.
Tours is a nice town, it is sometimes called the little Paris. Why it has been by passed in the tourist trade is curious to us. It has everything you would want from a French city if you were visiting. But. . . if you want to experience a French city that has not had its soul ripped out by tourism, keep it quiet, but give Tours a look as I am sure you will enjoy yourself as much as we did.