August 1 - Tours, Poitiers & Bordeaux

 Not as cool this morning as yesterday, overcast for most of the day. Temperatures in the low 20s.

I was in for a huge shock today when we reached the motorway outside of Tours – TRAFFIC. WOW, is all I had to say. Apparently the beginning of August is a popular time for the French to take vacation (although July was too.) Some take the month, while some take less. Apparently the French get 5 weeks of vacation. Doesn’t actually seem like a lot compared to my perception. On the first day of this land tour the guide indicated that the traffic would be bad on the last day, so we altered the schedule a bit to account for it, but I had NO IDEA. It was like rush hour on Deerfoot Trail. 3 lanes in each direction (only our direction busy), bumper to bumper with frequent stops. This was solid for about 2.5 hours and then intermittently throughout the whole day. The road is great – there are just a ton of vehicles.

snacks

My second WOW of the day came next. Our first ‘technical’ stop, as our guide describes them, was as crowded as the motorway. It seemed as though one of the bus loads of travellers was on an overnight journey as they were in the gas station bathroom changing clothes, brushing teeth and taking showers. This was where we learned too, that truck drivers in France can’t drive on the weekend and they have to take a 15 min break every hour. The trucks’ steering wheels have gizmos that track this information and will shut down when the driver hasn’t taken a break. The trucks also log this information to be given to police on demand – interesting.

Bordeaux by night

The bus situation for these last 3 day has been wonderful. There are only 22 people on this land tour, so there is plenty of room to spread out. The journey from our hotel in Paris to our boat in Bordeaux has involved a significant amount of bus time, the extra space has made this much more tolerable. Today alone we are in the bus for about 6 hours. This would be much less without this insane traffic. This mount of travel before or after a cruise is very unusual in our experience. In fact, if we hadn’t decided to do this optional land tour, we would have flown right to Bordeaux.

Part of the altered schedule was to do the walking tour of Tours yesterday instead of today when it is typically scheduled – GOOD PLAN! Because of this our first real stop is the town of Poitiers. This is really just a very short walking tour to see the Saturday market and a 1000 year old Romanesque church.

It’s too bad I have no reason to buy cheese or meat or fish or vegetables, because this market is the place. Actually I suspect this is just one of many, mind-blowing markets all over France. The thing that most blows my mind are the cheese stalls. In one market, there are at least 3 cheese stalls with more cheese in one place than I have ever seen. And it is cheap. I figure at least half if not less than what we pay in Calgary. Their regional speciality is apparently goat cheese and that is by far the biggest price difference – not surprising considering it is made right here.

A quick lunch here is a panini of regional goat cheese and beer.

We finally reached the river boat around 5:00 after leaving Tours at 8:30. That’s the progress we made on not-so-modern infrastructure of Sri Lanka and India!!

During one of our technical stops we got a couple of snacks…Bolognaise chips and a Magnum ‘Black’ ice-cream. The ice cream is vanilla laced with espresso covered in a chocolate shell – OK, but I expected more coffee flavour and the chips are just crazy. In Paris we had the Compté cheese flavour and now these. I think roast chicken flavour is next.