Vouvray & Tours

Wednesday October 3, 2007

So, today, after almost a week, I finally posted my blog, adding the pictures that Blogger wouldn’t allow me to enter when I last posted in Narbonne. I mentioned yesterday that the posting was courtesy of the Tourism Office in a very quaint village over the valley from us called le Grand Pressigny. They rented space on their computer for 2 euros an hour for non-residents like me and I just unplugged their computer and plugged in mine and I was off to the races. In a country where everyone has a cell phone, I’m finding this lack of public Internet accessibility a little strange.

When I returned to le Vieux Moulin de Noix it was around 11:00 and we started the day’s journey, which was a visit to Vouvray and then Tours. We got to Vouvray around lunch, amidst some drizzle, so quickly settled on a nice place to eat called le Brasserrie des Charlands, right on the main intersection of the village. Tony and I finally had a local specialty called rillettes that is basically a pulled pork pate, coarse in nature, but very tasty. Tony also had poulet noir - another specialty of the area. We had a great white Vouvray, made from chenin blanc from top producer Huet that we all really enjoyed. Following lunch, we went to a cave next door and tried their Vouvray, which none of us liked. Even though we’re purposely keeping to the dry ones, the wine from this area is not a hit so far, with the exception of the reds from Chinon.

Next, we were off to Tours for a tour. How clever! Tours is a large city, but we focused on the old town near the Loire River and found it quite interesting, especially the ancient, leaning, half-timbered houses which differed from those in the Alsace or Brittany in that the space between timbers is bricked rather than stuccoed. The longer we stayed in Tours, the more the sky turned blue, but despite our optimism, we returned to Barrou in gray overcast skies. The hillside is certainly green and the rivers are seriously swollen. Maybe the skies are all rained out?