Un Week-End à Tours

I had a great weekend that went a long way towards restoring my enthusiasm for the year ahead. I lived in Tours in 2002-03 and fell madly in love with the city (though, to be fair, it took a good six months for me to warm up to it). One of the perks of being in Le Mans is that it's only an hour's train ride away, so off I went. (This is the short version of the story; the long one involves a bus, a tram and a guy who, given the option to sit anywhere he could in the train, opted to bypass three completely empty rows in order to sit next to me and fart violently every ten minutes.)

But Tours-- oh, so worth the suffering! I take the same picture every time I'm here, of the city hall, because it never gets any less gorgeous:

At the train station, I met my boy Bama Ross, who has hidden himself away in England for the past two years but could no longer evade me. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel (a very comfortable, cheap place run by someone Ross knows, naturally, because Ross knows everyone) and proceeded directly to The Pale, our home away from home.

There’s just something special about this place—no matter when you show up, there’ll be someone there you know. Ther’s also something immeasurably awesome about having the barmaid on duty make a phone call for you, and the following exchange takes place:

Phone: Ring.

Jodie: Hello?

Me: Roll damn tide!

Jodie: Oh! I’m just across the street, I’ll be right down.

Brilliant. Jodie, the darling of the Pale (and most of Tours, frankly), is returning home to Ireland after 10 years. And while on the one hand, I’d like to scold her for her bad timing, she’s been talking about this move for as long as I’ve known her, and I’m proud of her for finally making it happen. So good luck to you, Jodes—and give those students what-for!

One of the many reasons we love Jodie is that she always locates our mugs for us. The tradition at The Pale is, once you’ve consumed 100 pints of beer, they give you your own glass. And there are no repeat names—mine is the first and only Melissa, but Ross, seeing as how there was already a Ross somewhere, became Bama Ross. These days, they’re having to think of exotic and bizarre names to put on their mugs, so we old-school types feel a bit smug.

Sunday morning, Jodie and I went to Les Halles to buy oysters and shrimp, which was an adventure in itself. She was preparing an appéro that evening to thank everyone who’s helped her get ready for her move. And we shut the place down that night—not in a rowdy way, just fun. The girls were running around singing ABBA songs (myself excluded—I was outside with the boys pretending to know enough about Formula One racing to hold up my end of the conversation, when the truth is everything I know about Formula One I learned from a book narrated by a dog.)

The weather, it’s worth noting, continues to be spectacular. As I write this from my couch in Le Mans, I could almost say that it’s chilly except this is August and you would all swear I’m exaggerating. All I can say is low of 57 degrees. Beyond that, words fail me. Tomorrow I’ll explore the city some more and report back anything of interest (to me. Your interests are irrelevant.)