No tours in Tours

It is getting down to slim pickin's out here in the tourist universe at least for this particular "flyin' by the seat of my pants" tourist. Holiday train connections put me into St. Malo too late to be able to appreicate all that that little berg has to offer. I take the blame for that one for not knowing the holiday schedule however the next days delay wasn't a holiday thing. I wanted to get the early afternoon train out of St. Malo to get to Tours by late afternoon. According to the schedule I had in hand, that was quite doable. The schedule I had in hand did not account for work on the train line. One of the three legs of the trip (the longest one, too, of course) was on the bus. To late of an arrival into Tours left no time to scout so the next morning was spent trying to get the scout in but alas, by the time I found out about the various villa and chateau tours still operating this time of year, they had all departed. I did a modified version of the self-guided walking tour of the town. There is still a bit of the old town-ness to Tours--narrow cobbled streets, some half timbered buildings an occassional ruin but they have moved on and are really wanting to be cosmopolitan. The reason I came over this way is to spend some time in and see a bit of the Loire Valley but I'm thinkin' this area is probably best seen with more personal transportation available. After missing the arranged tours and then doing the town, the front desk at the hostel told me "Oh, by the way, here's your free ticket to the grottos just outside of town". A bit of investigation revealed that no public transportation went out that way so I wasn't going to be able to take advantage of that particular freebie. Too bad, too because I think it might have been the highlight of my visit to Tours.

So I was up and out not too early but still early enough to catch the 9:05 train out of Tours to Brive. A couple of changes later and I would be in Brive by 1:30 and be back to my normal routine. Funny how things don't go as planned; ain't it? The 9:05 train was a bus. The connecting train was delayed 15 . . .no, 20 minutes . . .wait, you can take this train . . .Okay, this train won't work so I'm going to give you a note for the ticket agent inside and he will get you a ticket for the next train going in the same direction you are going and you'll only have to wait three hours. And sure enough three hours later I finally was on the train. The only good thing about that particular train ride is that it carried us out of drizzly, gray cloudy weather into a sunnier day. (Have I mentioned how good the weather has been on this trip! I've been lovin' every minute of it)

So here I am in Brive. Now what? I'll see what brochures I can find here at the hostel and try to do some planning but before I do that just few- a few random observations because the internet if free here but there are no scandisc ports.

For quite awhile now I've been traveling through different regions all in varying degrees of autumn leafing. A day or so I ago it appeared that I had maxed out on getting to see changing leaves. Most of the trees are now naked or almost so. I say almost because the other day I saw a stand of (possible birch) trees (really white bark) qnd they were leafless except for large spheres of green scattered throughout. Harkening back to my forestry years, I'm guessing it's some kind of parasitic thing. Actually, I keep thinking mistletoe or mistletoe-like but I don't know if I'm even barking up the right tree with that thought. What I do know is that from a distance, it looks like a bunch of wild poodles are hanging out in the birch trees of the Loire Valley.

That's it for this installment except to say that I don't proof read these updates because it would use up too much of the time when I've got to pay for access but since to day is free I ,ight go bqck qnd check it. But just so you know, the keyboards are laid out a bit different in each country. I'm no great typist anyway so when you throw that into the mix you get the mess you have been dealing with. One this keyboard, for instance the q & a are reversed the , is where the m is supposed be. You have to use the shift key to get a period. All of the numbers along the top row are funcitons of the shift key as well. The w & z are reversed and it goes on and on. Well, I'm not gonna proof this one either but let you figure out what other keys are moved around based on how often I screw up! By the way, can you find these keys on your keyboard---§@éàüçè ?