Tours

The Thierry & Nadine Rolfe family. L to R...Alice, Thierry (Meme's youngest brother), Jeanne, Nadine, Megan, Chase. They were kind enough to let us stay at their house and then to show us around Tours. THANK YOU! We really do appreciate it and had so much fun getting to know family. I loved hearing Chase really use his French, even if I couldn't understand what was being said.

The Rolfes took us to a fortress on the Loire River, right next to a major (and ancient) bridge. This man, an art friend of Thierry's, decided that he would award certificates to artistic crossers of the bridge. He had a whole ceremony for it...

He would write the date, time, climatic conditions, and artistic purpose for the crossing and then have you sign his GIANT book.

Here's Chase giving his artistic statement. You can see the certificates hanging up to dry in the backgound. He presses them himself and has all kinds of stamps to make your crossing official. It was very fun and entertaining.

An old church in Tours=very pretty. Here is the pipe organ and the rose window behind it.

One of the oldest (or the oldest) buildings in Tours.

Chenonceau. This is the one chateau we visited. It was beautiful inside and outside, even in the winter.

Cool ceiling architecture.

Cinderella bells down in the basement kitchen...Cinderelly, Cinderelly....

The kitchen, which was used during WWI & WWII. Very nice and functional...I would like it for myself.

Pretty kitchen with real fruits

A corridor in the castle. Interesting note: This castle straddles a river and during WWII, one side of the castle was in Germany-occupied France and the other was in liberated France. So French citizens would use this corridor to flee from one side to the other. Interesting.

The front of Chenonceau (try to ignore the reconstruction tent). Isn't it pretty?

The walkway to the castle....that's it in the distance.

Chase and I in front of the Amboise castle. Very pretty. This is where Meme lived for a time. Her home/restaurant was right down the street.

A cool bridge we crossed while driving from Provence to Tours. It was really high.

Me, Chase, Thomas Caruso. Caruso was one of Chase's mission companions in Montreal. He lives in Aix-en-Provence, which was on our way from Provence to Tours, so we stopped to have lunch with him.