My Time in Tours

I lived in Tours, France for the month of January to complete an intensive French language course at the Institut de Touraine.

A small town in the Loire Valley, Tours is about an hour by train south of Paris.

Tours is the quintessential quaint little French town and it has a very historic feel to it thanks to its old city center, Place Plumereau (a.k.a ‘Place Plum’) with buildings dating back from the Middle Ages.

I did another home-stay in Tours, this time with a lovely elderly woman and her older daughter. The house I stayed in probably predated America, so the heating system was a tad sketchy and the high cost of heat in France meant that it was a very, very cold January. Truth be told, the hot water was so sparse in my shower that I learned how to bathe in 5 minutes, every other day (and that’s 5 minutes from clothes off to clothes on). But did I mention the glorious French windows in my bedroom overlooking a park? Totally worth it.

My host mother and her daughter were some of the sweetest, most hospitable people I’ve ever met. They picked me up at the train station one Sunday afternoon completely disoriented and barely able to keep my ‘Madame’s and ‘Señora’s straight. It didn’t take them long to figure out that I barely spoke French (nor me very long to determine that they spoke only slightly better English) so our first few dinners were spent around a very large French-English dictionary. But they were patient, and I got better… eventually.

One thing that I have to gush about is how damn good the food was. My host mother was a fabulous cook and I inhaled weird things like snails (land and sea) and beets (previously a mortal enemy) with gusto. My favorite thing that ma mère made, however, was a classic from her native Brittany (in the north-west of France); buckwheat crêpes with ham, Emmenthal cheese, and a fried egg, served with alcoholic cider. Yum. Yum. Yum.

I should have a picture of this fantastic dish, of course, but I was too busy scarfing it down to snap a photo so forgive me.

Instead, enjoy this photo of me eating a caramel and hot fudge crêpe!