around town during the day….
during the night…
Today is my first day in Tours. It is amazing to finally be in a place full of people which I do not speak their language. Travel around is so different, but so amazing. So after a full day of traveling around, I think we’ve walked around the town around 3-4 times… 
but it was pretty good. So today besides the site seeing and lots of pictures, we’ve accomplished few very key things that I am very proud of
1) A new Orange SIM card. This was one of the first item that i’ve purchased in France. Yes my Iphone is still broken, but Vicky’s is not… so we purchased a new sim card and now we have a French number but… internet and data plan is still not working.
2) Since my bags were still lost, I had to get a new power adapter. Yep… visiting the French hardware store was interesting
3) Buying French fruits.. what I have noticed is that French fruits so far are not as good quality and sweet as american fruits. They are a little be less healthy looking fruits. Definitely not as good as the fruits from Taiwan. BTW I love the fresh markets in France… so many food… so many different type of stuff… I even saw them cutting up a rabbit… ummm… looks delicious.
4) Buying tickets for Chateau viewing tomorrow. Yep got two rail tickets to Amboise and Chateau Chenonceau. How exciting!!! More to come tomorrow.
5) Ordered food in a French restaurant. So after a full day of walking around town we found this little French restaurant, it was amazing. Wonderful food. Oh and their escargot was great!!
Some status updates.
1) Bags are still lost… KLM have no updates and I’ve called AmEx for help… we will see what they can do for me.
2) My iphone is finally back to life.. but unfortunately I had to reload everything.
3) no time to really work on the photos … maybe in a few days.
Once again… it is late and got an early start tomorrow…
It has been an amazing adventure so far… with with lots of luck and good fortune, we are finally in Tours. Tours is very very quiet and wet right now, but it seems like a very peaceful town. So what happened?
Well, shortly after my last post, Vicky came back with good news of locating us 2 tickets to Paris. That’s the benefit of being a Gold Status member of an airline. So our flight was around 3:30 pm. Of course, the flight was once again delayed, this time it was because of another flight that caused us to have missing crew members. When we finally arrived in Paris around 6:30pm, we weren’t able to locate our luggages. Yes… after yesterday’s huge mess, our bags are lost. we went to the lost luggage declared our missing luggage and got a tracking number. What I’ve noticed is that when the French say they know a little English.. well.. they actually know alot more than I know French. After I’ve given up looking for our bags, we tried to get our train ticket to Tours. Our original tickets have expired already, so new tickets had to be purchased. Since the TGV was also delayed… more waiting. Our ride to Tours was a 3 segment ride. From Paris to Messy and from Messy to St. Perrier and from St Perrier to Tours (via regular train). We were very very fortunate to run in to a French student coming home from Edinburg. His name is Fransua (I think that is how you spell it). He was also going home to Tours. We were so lucky to have met him, because both of our connections were a little bit strange. 1st connect to St. Perrier, two arriving TGV trains arrived connected together, our train was the second train in the back. I would have missed that train and waited for the next train if it was not for our new friend. Second, during our transfer to the regular train in St Perrier, it was our friend that help us realized that we were boarding now and we barely made it on board.
After a final short train ride from St. Perrier to Tours, we are finally here. Tours was very very quiet. Yep it is a smaller town, where when I ask “if you speak English in Paris”, most people do… But so far the three people that we’ve met do not speak any english. So finding the Hotel at night was an adventure. The hotel was kind enough to leave us the passcode and our room key. So we checked in with out any problem.
The room is small.. but reasonable. Well.. it is late… time for another wonderful adventure tomorrow
So tonight I’ve reserved my train tickets from Paris to Tours. It’s going to be interesting… I will be riding on the TGV!!!
So what is the TGV… TGV is the high speed train in France. I remember reading about it when I was a little kid. I remember reading about the bullet train in Japan and the French TGV. Oh… and now I will have a chance to ride in one!!!! woo hoo!!!
I am very excited about the train ride…I love trains… I remember seeing a steam engine train when was little and riding a the back of an old train with my dad … so many train memories…
so… more information on TGV!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV
Next job rental car and stuff to do in Tours… any suggestions?
Today is my first day back to work after Thanksgiving. It was a busy day and I still have this nagging cold. This is very annoying.
But one good thing is that we manage to book the a hotel in Tours France for the first few nights. We are still looking for the hotels for the rest of the trip in Paris.
But this is where we are planning to stay for the first few nights.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g187130-d219884-Reviews-Hotel_du_Manoir-Tours_Loire_Valley_Centre.html
View Paris Trip 2009 in a larger map
More to come… I am feeling tired .. so I am going to bed now… I will try to set up a new site for this month’s activities… maybe tomorrow.
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