Great success!

May is a busy old month for me - this weekend (and week, with the bonus two public holidays in the middle) is a quiet pause, but otherwise, with the society wedding of the season and a visit from my sister coming up, things are pretty hectic. The same went for last weekend, when I finally hosted my Kiwi friend Amber in Tours. She had meant to come around a year and a half ago, but the trip was cancelled at the last minute when she realised she'd lost her passport, and never rescheduled.

So this time, I wanted to make sure the trip lived up to its long-awaited hype. And, if I do say so myself (using the most current pop-culture reference in my bag of tricks), it was a Great Success! I tried to achieve a balance of the different experiences the Loire Valley has to offer: from châteaux to good food to (obviously) wine, and mix in some of the more off-beat experiences you might not have on your list as the average tourist. And we were lucky enough to have perfect weather, despite forecasts to the contrary, and some interesting unexpected encounters thrown in.

After a girly wine and nibbles evening at La Cave à Manger on Friday night, we were up relatively bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a short (c. 30 minute) road trip to Azay le Rideau, where we enjoyed a delicious lunch in a sunny courtyard and checked out the château. Azay was mainly chosen because Philippa and I had yet to go there, but it is also to be recommended for its beautiful setting on a small island on a lake, and its small but pretty style. It probably only took around an hour and a half to see, with the interior not being particularly outstanding, but I think that was plenty to be satisfied but not bored traipsing around for hours. Just taking photos of the beautiful exterior was probably the highlight.

I was brave and had the "goats cheese and raspberry crème brûlée" for my starter at lunch. It was nice, although it could have passed for a dessert, to be honest

Me and Amber at lunch in Azay-le-Rideau

A strange optical phenomenon in the sky - around the sun was a dark circle lined with a perfectly round rainbow. I did some research afterwards and found that this is a 22° halo, caused by the refraction of light in tiny ice crystals in the clouds. It was pretty impressive seeing it in this setting, and imagining what people in the Renaissance period might have made of such a sight. In fact, a related phenomenon, "sun dogs", is believed to explain the appearance of "three suns" in the sky before a key battle in the Wars of the Roses.

A pretty café in the château grounds which was presumably once a gatehouse or something

Me in front of the château

The château and its lake

Me and Amber at the château

View from the castle windows

On Saturday night, I rounded up the ladies to check out one of the premier events in Tours' glittering social calendar - the Foire de Tours (tradeshow)/Fête Fouraine (carnival). According to one of the vendors I spoke to on saturday night, this is the biggest event of its kind in France outside Paris (whether it's true, I don't know). By day, you can check out a variety of stalls selling everything from plumbing to furniture (exciting stuff), but you can also take in carnival rides to your heart's content or - and this is where it gets interesting - sample the delights of the massive "gourmet village" i.e. eat and drink as much as humanly possible. And so we did, in a bustling (and crowded - my floor-length dress was, in hindsight, not smart) fairground atmosphere.

By some miracle, Amber, Liz, Philippa, Mel and I were all up and at 'em again on Sunday (after about 5 hours' sleep) and ready for the last of my planned activities, a wine-tasting trip to the nearby small town of Vouvray, an area particularly known for its sparkling wines. (Did you know the Loire Valley is France's second-biggest producer of sparkling wines, after Champagne? And at a fraction of the price too.) I'd carefully researched half a dozen wineries that were open for tastings on a Sunday, and plotted out the route between them on Google Maps. First stop was the splendidly named Domaine d'Orléans-Bourillon, which Liz had seen on Facebook was having an open house that weekend. This turned out to be a fortuitous discovery, an experience a little bit more special than some other wine tastings I've been to in the region, where you were invited to spit your wine into the gutter of a barn (not that I think I'm too good to spit in a drain, of course). From the original glimpse of the cave (French for wine cellar, but also often literally a cave, as in this case), which was decorated with candles and an illuminated picture of Marilyn Monroe, this was a special visit.

The cave's tasting area

Amber and I enjoy a VIP tasting of 30€ moelleux wine

Basically, the people who turned up for the open day were the owner's mates, and us. So it didn't take long before we were basically being treated like the owner's mates too. This included being treated to free Thai food, quickly moving to addressing everyone as "tu" like old friends, and basically being just given whole free glasses of wine, rather than the tiny tasting sips you often get at these events. We even got escorted into a special posh tasting room and treated to a 30€ bottle of moelleux wine as a special VIP treat. I didn't really get too much out of the wine side of things, since I don't drink a lot of white wine and particularly detest sweet wine (I slipped my glass of the expensive moelleux to Liz when the owner wasn't looking), but the whole experience was a lot of fun!

It was one of the more bizarre encounters we've had, and I hope (and imagine) that it was a different experience than Amber would probably have had if she was just your typical tourist. It's not every day you end up spending an entire afternoon (because yes, we failed to move on to any other wineries as planned) basically hanging out with a vintner and his mates. There wasn't a lot of dégustation in the sense of really focusing on and discussing the wine, but the fun atmosphere more than made up for that I think! And maybe it provided a contrast to the often snobby and stand-offish reputation the French (or should that be Parisians who work in the tourist industry) have amongst tourists. We left with bisous all round, bottles of wine in tow (he managed to sell two of the 30€ numbers, and even I got a white wine for guests). So I think I can declare it a successful weekend in Touraine!

Party all the time, party all the time

Hello long-lost friends! It has been too long since my last blog post, although in my defense, not much blog-worthy has been going on. This doesn't mean I've been in winter hibernation (although I think everyone is ready for spring to bloody well be sprung) - there have been Fun Times Aplenty, but not really of the variety that make for a good blog post. Although I'm now going to run through them quickly anyway.

Sadly, my good friend Laura left Tours (and then she came back again a few weeks later for the weekend, but then left again for good). Such is the nature of expat life - people come and go and sometimes only stay for a short period of time (a year, in her case). On the upside, it means that expats are usually pretty open to meeting new people and making friends in a shorter time-frame than might be the norm (certainly for France!), but the downside is saying goodbye to your friends just as quickly. Of course these days it's much easier to stay in touch with things like facebook, and even though that's a poor substitute for real-life friendship, it does keep things ticking over in the hope that one day you might be able to reconnect with a handy network of people flung out all over the globe.

We hardly need an excuse, but of course people leaving also mean parties! I think Laura's leaving do was the week or so after I came back from Belgium, and we had a lovely evening consuming her left-over alcohol stocks (including too much of the aquavit I brought back from Norway for her - that stuff is lethal!), playing a game of Secret Santa where the prizes were all the little trinkets she hadn't managed to rehome or sell up to that point (I scored some tupperware and little serving dishes for dips or olives or what have you), and busting a groove to a dancing game on Xbox Live.

 This is hard to see, but I'm pretending to eat the box because it has "not for human consumption" written on it

Liz and Charlie. I wish I had their ways with scarves!

Liz, Philippa and Charlie

A couple of weeks after that, Cute Neighbour, who you may remember from my birthday party, invited me over to watch the rugby at his place. I'm not a rugby girl, but in any case he accidentally (?) invited me round 3 hours early, and we spent the time chatting about all sorts of things and it wasn't at all awkward. Pity he still has a German Girlfriend. The only downside was that he smoked so much I felt ill and had to shower when I got home! In return, the next week or the week after I invited him round to Liz's place for a cocktail evening, which turned into an all-nighter out on the town.

Me and Charlie

Me, Liz and Charlie

Gangstas

Me and Cute Neighbour. There is photographic evidence that I had my hand on his thigh for quite some time. Whoops!

Then Laura came back for the weekend last week, and we had a pretty restrained time of it by our standards. This included going out Friday and Saturday nights for a quiet couple of pints at the pub and having a couple of glasses of wine with lunch on Saturday though, so it probably still wasn't exactly what the doctor ordered.

Snapping a few selfies in the kitchen: no night is complete without it!

Also somewhere in here was the time we went out and Caroline and I ended up staying out until 7 am or so when the clubs closed and then I was lured back to her place for an 'after'. I did actually want to go home, but she guilt-tripped me into not letting her go off by herself with 4 blokes, so the night ended drinking gin smoothies (much, much better than I would have imagined) as the sun came up - until after 11 am, in fact!

That brings us to this weekend, which had all the makings of a classic: Saturday was the Fête des Vins de Borgeuil, Caro and Marcia wanted to watch the rugby on Saturday night, it was Philippa's birthday and St. Patrick's Day on Sunday, plus after the long winter break, the Formula One was finally back!

It was pretty rainy and miserable for the Fête des Vins, but that didn't stop us having a good time. How can you not have a good time at an event where you pay 2€ to buy a tasting glass (to keep) and then you can sample as much wine as you like? As well as the usual suspects, we were joined by a new friend Mel and her husband. In a Gwannel Sandiego first, I was emailed by Mel last week via the blog! I have met up with people, mostly in Paris, via the blog before, but this was the first time someone in Tours came across the blog and contacted me. It feels a bit weird - while I'm not silly enough to think it's not "out there" on the internet, I kind of don't think of it as something that people in Tours are going to be reading. But, that aside, we clicked really well, so it is great that it has brought us together. What was I saying at the beginning about expat life and making friends?

Liz and I stayed on at the Fête until nearly 7 pm, after everyone else had called it a day, which meant a bit of a mad rush when I got home to get showered and changed and redo my ruined nail polish (I need to learn it's never a good idea to try to rush doing your nails), while watching a replay of the F1 qualifying from the morning (it actually got rained off, but I still wanted to watch it again because there was a lot of action before that).

And then off to stand in the pub while the rugby was on. We were pretty late, but seeing that I stood with my back to the screen, I didn't care. Poor Scottish flower Caroline was a bit deflated by the result though, and ended up going home not much later. As for me, I stayed on until closing time (2 am) but considering we had started at the wine festival at 2 pm, I decided not to go out clubbing and probably got home around 3 (after quite some time of wandering around collectively trying to decide what to do/chatting in the street). I probably should have got some sleep, but I tried to stay awake to watch the F1 at 7. I actually did quite well, only falling asleep for the last half an hour or so, and then unfortunately waking up to get a glimpse of the podium ceremony, so I spoiled the result for myself. Oh well.

The Tours Goat has made an appearance on the blog before, but I had to take a snap of him all gussied up with balloons!

Wearing green (nail polish too) in honour of St. Patrick's Day - it was after midnight by this stage!Also, I want to know what's going on in the background with Charlie and some cute blokes... I was too busy watching the F1 (they ran the rest of it late because of the rain) to notice at the time.

So, fun times, even if writing about them all at once does make me feel like a bit of a drunken disgrace!

Tours: reinforcing French stereotypes since 1352

You can't get much Frencher than a Garlic and Basil Fair, a Tours tradition on St. Anne's Day, the 26th of July, which dates back to the Middle Ages (I made up the 1352 date by the way). The fair does what it says on the tin - loads of garlic and basil along with assorted other foodie delights. Mmm, smells yummy!

No vampires here

This guy rocked the hat-and-mo combo

Lots and lots of soap

Stop! Basil time! Okay, that's a no entry sign, not a stop sign, but 80s kids can't help themselves with the MC Hammer refs

I really wanted to wear a string of garlic, but I think that would have been frowned upon

Si tu vas pas à la Fête de la Musique...

...la Fête de la Musique vient à toi! (If you don't go to the Fête de la Musique, the Fête de la Musique comes to you.) So someone said to me over drinks on Wednesday, the day before the Fête de la Musique, aka World Music Day, and it turned out to be true! He meant that you can't avoid hearing the music whether you go out or not, so you might as well make the most of it, but in my case, the Fête de la Musique came to me in the form of my friend Laura, who rang up to say she was coming past my house and did I want to come into town with her?

I had brownies in the oven, since Liz had given me a whole bunch of stickers which enabled me to get a fancy new mixer (for 25€, saving 38€!) to replace my crappy stick blender which is feeble and overheats all the time, along with some pretty broad hints about me using the new mixer to make brownies (if you can call saying "you know what you can make with the new mixer? Brownies!" about 20 times a 'hint'). So anyway, Laura and I had a glass of wine while we waited for the brownies to finish baking, then another glass of wine while we ate a brownie, and then headed into the centre-ville to see what the haps was.

As well as organised events and bars having their own bands or DJs, amateur musicians are encouraged to play on the streets during the Fête de la Musique, often only a few metres away from each other, so you can be listening to jazz one minute and dubstep the next (not that I actually know what dubstep is, but I'm assuming you can, seems to be what all the kids are listening to these days). The old town was really crowded, but most people didn't seem that drunk, and there was a great open, festive atmosphere, with people seeming more willing to smile and chat than is usually the case on a Saturday night or whatever. We just wandered through the town, from the Place du Monstre through the streets around Place Plum' (didn't go into the Place though, too crowded) and then over to Rue Colbert where we watched a group playing on the street for a while until it got to about 12.15 and the bands had to pack up, so we headed into the Pale for a nightcap. 

I'm glad I went out, it was fun! Of course, last year the Fête de la Musique was the last time I went out with my old flatmate, since the next day I came home to the agent in our house informing me that she hadn't been paying the rent for a year... Time flies, hard to believe it's been a year since the start of all that drama, I suppose especially since it just dragged on and on with tax issues and so forth. I'd like to say I'm in a happier place now, but since then the only big thing that's changed is I no longer have a job, so yeah. Anyway...

Of course, the reason the Fête de la Musique was yesterday was because it was the longest day and the official start of summer! And yesterday, apart from the bit where it bucketed down for 10 minutes or so while I was walking to Carrefour, was actually quite nice weather, luckily! The sky wasn't even completely dark (that dark blue colour rather than black) when we were heading in to town around 11 pm, and this morning I was (reluctantly) woken up by sunshine streaming in through my shutters. So far, we've had rain, rain and more rain, but fingers crossed now it's officially summer!

I make notoriously crappy videos and this is no exception really, but it gives a little snapshot of being on the street during the Fête

One of the street bands playing near the Pale

Me and Laura enjoying the music

I ate an eel and I liked it

Not eating eels became one of my life's ambitions after reading, and then watching, the wonderful The Tin Drum. For those of you who aren't familiar and have strong stomachs, here's the key scene as written (you really should go read the book, it's good stuff, I promise!) or on film:

 

If that creeped you out, then the Eels song from The Mighty Boosh, while still a bit gross, lyrics-wise, might take the edge off a bit, or is at least less likely to make you lose your lunch. Plus any excuse to gaze upon the glory of Noel Fielding:



But back to the topic at hand after that musical break: your faithful correspondent was tricked into eating eel fresh (?) from the Loire at a cooking demonstration at this weekend's Vitiloire wine festival. And, you know what, I liked it! I don't know if I'm going to be signing up to knowingly eat more eels anytime soon, at least not after seeing that clip again, but hey, I can tick it off the list if nothing else! (PS 'eel' is 'anguille', if you don't want to unexpectedly feast on one yourself.) Hopefully no horse's heads were involved in the making of this dish...

As for the Vitiloire, it's my third time attending this wine festival. For the first time, I went wanting to buy wine and came away with only one bottle, quelle disastre! We went for the last 4 hours on Sunday, and it just didn't turn out to be long enough. I tasted plenty of pleasant wines, but despite taking notes, they all started to blur after a while, and in the end we just ran out of time to go back and buy the ones I'd pegged as 'nice'. Must be more decisive next time, or leave more time for tasting! Still, it was a nice 4 hours - it costs 5€ for a glass and you can taste as much as you want, plus there is food and more structured dégustations and the aforementioned cooking demonstrations.

I had been meaning to go down on Saturday as well, but it was just so damn hot! 29 degrees, 80% humidity - unbearable. I was vacuuming my little attic apartment in the middle of the day, wearing the ear defenders I bought for the F1 since my vacuum cleaner has started making the most unbearable high-pitched squeal, and literally dripping with sweat. Or, sorry, if you're a stickler for such things, then I was literally glowing with a sense of ladylike decorum. I don't like a lot of heat. People think that New Zealand's hot, but it's really not, at least not where I'm from (does get damnably humid though). In Auckland, I would say 25 is nice and hot, 28 getting probably too hot, and over 30 is pretty much unheard of. (This record may have been surpassed, but in 2009 a temperature of 32.4°C was enough to make it the hottest day 'ever' in Auckland. I think that was just before I came back to Auckland from Wellington, because I seem to recall missing it - and never having seen temperatures of over 30 reported in my personal experience.)

Thankfully, that evening we had a huge (but fairly brief) thunderstorm, with hail even, which brought the temperatures down. There were fireworks for the Vitiloire on Saturday just after the storm, but unfortunately I just missed them, since I'd been umming and ahhing too long about whether to go into town for a drink or whether it would rain again. Friday was another fun day - a free massage in the morning, followed by a workout (wrong way round, I know, but the massage was too early to get up for the gym beforehand), a bbq lunch in the sunshine at Liz's and then meeting a friend for a late afternoon drink down at the guinguette. And tomorrow I'm off to Paris overnight, staying with the lovely Mary Kay. Hard life!