wine

Tasting Touraine

/ Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Welcome to the 4th and final post about my 5 week sojourn in Tours, France. Saving the best for last, it’s all about the wonderful food and drink I managed to sample. It’s hard to go wrong with any French cuisine, but there are a nearly infinite number of local and regional specialties to try. Food production in France is heavily protected and you will often see products labeled either AOC or AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée, and Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée). The labelling applies to food like cheese, wine, and certain cured meats, as well as any other regional specialty. AOP is more broadly European, while AOC is explicitly French (I think?). My understanding is that the regulations for AOC are a little more strict, but both guarantee that the product is made with the standards set by the region to preserve the integrity of the product and taste. This includes everything from where the animals can be raised, what they can be fed, how they can be milked (or slaughtered), where the fruit can be grown, the genetic strain of the produce, the time and method of harvesting, and all of that before you even get to how the food is then processed, packaged and stored! They take their regional specialties very seriously here.

My school was just off the main square in Old Tours and so I got to walk through it every day. I would go to local boulangerie for breakfast and/or lunch, sampling a wide array of pastries and sandwiches. My favorite sandwich in France remains the butter, salami, and cornichon on baguette, but I have enjoyed an array of sandwiches with versions of butter, pork products, cheeses, and even smoked salmon. There are also a lot of restaurants on the square, everything from traditional French to dumplings, sushi, tacos, burgers, and even an Afghani restaurant! Tours is both a tourist town and a university town, so it’s full of variety. 

Bakeries

A simple bakery (boulangerie) may have 10+ different types of bread which are baked fresh every day and must follow the strict laws for quality and freshness. Bread must be baked on the premises where it is sold, and may only contain 4 main ingredients (flour, water, salt & yeast) with the exceptional addition of seeds, nuts, dried fruits, or chocolate. Because it is made without preservatives, the bread must be eaten with a day or two at most.

Boulangerie also sell pastries (patisserie), which includes everything from simple croissant and pain au chocolate to various types of tarts and cakes, all of which must also be fresh and preservative free. The best part about boulangerie is the freshness and quality of the food, but following that, the prices are very reasonable. A baguette is often less than 1€, and other types of bread are weighed out by the kilo. Treats like a pain au chocolate (often called a chocolate croissant in English) are usually a between 1-1.50€, and more complex desserts like tarts and cakes between 3-4€ per serving. Thirdly, the boulangerie do not restrict food sales to lunch and dinner hours like restaurants. They sell food from open to close. In addition to bread and sweets, they offer sandwiches and savory pastries like quiche at any time (before 7pm). This is especially useful for tourists who may not be accustomed to restaurant hours in France where no food is served between 3-7pm.

I visited a boulangerie pretty much every day for a sandwich and pastry. It can be a lot of fun to try all the different options, and see the interpretations of the same dishes from one bakery to the next. Many even offer a fixed menu of a sandwich, drink, and less expensive pastry (like an eclair) for 6-7€.

In addition to all the pastries I got at various bakeries around town, my school is also partnered with a pastry school, so sometimes we got extra treats from the pastry students. One week, a German couple were attending classes with us in town to visit their daughter who owns a patisserie and they brought boxes of her fine pastries to share with us. Another night, the sister pastry school hosted a party with tables laden with canapes and tiny bite size pastries. Heaven!

The one local pastry specialty is called Nougat of Tours. It’s not a nougat at all, it’s a cake. Specifically a “travel cake” made for easy transport and meant to stay fresh for several days (unlike bread and most other pastry which really needs to be eaten the same day).

In my quest for culinary experiences, I bought one to try, but I was a bit underwhelmed. It’s a cake with almond flour, dried fruits and apricot preserves, which should be lovely, and it’s definitely as good or better than most things you’d find in a US bakery, but after the beautiful apricot tarts and apple turnovers ate which were buttery and bursting with fruit and just the perfect amount of sweet with a hint of salt… This cake landed on the candy side of too sweet, and because the fruit used is dried and or in jam form, it lacks the pop of acidity and brightness in other fruit desserts. The cake itself was a bit dry (maybe that’s the “travel” quality?) but otherwise a nice texture.

After a couple of initial assessment bites, I ended up finishing it with some Comté cheese (a hard aged cheese that is rather sharp) which may or may not be blasphemous but it took the edge off the sweetness.

On my very last day of classes, the school’s field trip included a final trip to the pastry school where the students were sharing the results of their final exams. The five desserts we were privileged to taste included an excellent cheesecake with a grapefruit coulis, a chocolate cake, a chocolate flan (very new experience for me!), a strawberry cream tart with fresh mint, truly an inspired combination, and very most specially, an award winning 5 texture vanilla gâteau. This last creation is the brainchild of Chef Angelo Musa, who had come to the school as a guest instructor. It’s called the 100% Vanille and is served at high tea at the restaurant La Galerie inside the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris where it sells for 21€ a pop!

Restaurants

I don’t go to restaurants that often when travelling because they are more expensive, but they are fantastic and invariably both better and cheaper than any in the US. Years ago, I discovered the joy of the set menu (formule or prix fixe) where you can get an appetizer, main dish, and dessert for a fixed price by choosing from a more limited menu. In fact, you can usually find this combination for 25-30€ depending on where you are, and unless you have your heart set on a particular dish, the set menu that is chosen by the restaurant each day represents the food they most recommend and may even be based on fresh products they found in the market that morning. Ordering from the menu a la carte can set you back 50-60€ for the same amount of food! And don’t forget, in France, taxes and services are included in the price of the meal, so you don’t need to worry about tacking on an additional 20-30%.

I found a restaurant close to my school here in Tours that offers a lunch menu of main dish plus dessert for just 13.90€! I had steak lunches a few times as a break from my boulangerie sandwiches. It’s not a Michelin experience or anything, but it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to get good quality, well prepared food at extremely reasonable prices in this country. I enjoyed the desserts outside the patisserie, too. My long time favorite is the cafe gourmand, which features a selection of small bites of the restaurant’s daily dessert alongside a cup of espresso. There were also a number of ice cream and gelato shops with interesting flavors like raspberry-bergamot and rose.

Cheese

One of the best ways to explore local food specialties is to find ‘the Hall” (les Halles). It’s an indoor market space, like a mall but for high quality food vendors. In my second week, I discovered Les Halles. There I began my education in the food products local to the area, especially the cheese. The prices tend to be higher than the Carrefour (a grocery store), but the products are amazing and less expensive than eating at restaurants every day. It’s a good compromise that enables me to indulge in fantastic local products without breaking the bank.

The region around Tours is called Touraine, so you can see certain products labelled this way if they are local specialties. I started my cheese journey with Sainte-Maure de Touraine. It’s a light and creamy cheese made from goat’s milk (don’t knock it because you had bad chevre in another country). I fell head over heels in love with it and went back for more three times. Interestingly, the second time I bought it from a different shop and it was different! I had thought that the AOC/AOP labelling would mean that the products were all the same, but then I learned a whole new set of information about cheese.

Soft cheese made from raw milk (not pasteurized) does a wild thing as it ages… it liquifies. The French people I talked to about this did not approve of my use of the description of liquid, apparently it’s called creameaux (which I thought meant “creamy”?) In any case, you can see the clear differences in the textures of the younger Sainte-Maure and the slightly older one. I had to do some Googling to make sure my cheese hadn’t gone off (it hadn’t), but when I ate it, I was surprised to find that the flavor had also changed. The younger cheese with a single texture was light and slightly woodsy. The more aged version was significantly stronger with a more pungent flavor. I felt that I could eat the young cheese on its own, but I wanted some bread to support the older and stronger version. During the few days it took me to devour my log of cheese, I noticed it got runnier each day. Online reviews of the aged soft cheese (correctly called “ripe”) said that the more ripe (runnier) the better, but acknowledged that it was still a matter of personal taste. When I went back for my third purchase, I was able to ask the vendor about it, and he told me there are actually 3 ages for the Sainte Maure. I never even tried the oldest version! I guess that means I have to go back some day.

Since it’s not legal in the US to make soft cheeses from raw milk, I had never in my life encountered such a thing as “ripe” cheese. I’ve had aged hard cheeses aplenty and even taken a workshop in Amsterdam about the process, but it took some effort to learn to dive in to the runny soft cheese and enjoy it.

In addition to the Sainte-Maure, I also tried Brossauthym, a local sheep cheese made with thyme. It’s very very soft and has a wild toasted grain flavor alongside it’s rich and complex creaminess. It’s also a local specialty with strict rules. The sheep kept in special pastures with local grasses and wildflowers to graze on, and they aren’t even milked during lambing, limiting the supply to half the year. My piece was largely one texture when I cut the rind, but within a few days, it too was ripening and the flavor changed little by little. By the last day, at least half of the remaining cheese had oozed out of the rind and pooled at the bottom of the waxy cheese paper I stored it in.

Pouligny St Pierre is another goat cheese, but it’s pyramid shaped. The exterior of the one I purchased was very soft to the touch, not soft as in the opposite of firm, but soft like you want to pet it. It was a bit unnerving because “velvety” is supposed to be about mouthfeel, not touch when it comes to food, but peaches are kind of fuzzy and they taste good, so I went for it. It has a similar creamy nutty flavor to the Sainte-Maure but a bigger punch than the unripened version, enough so that after my initial taste, I decided it also needed to be eaten with bread.

The last local cheese I tried was Couronne Lochoise. Although it has a distinctive ‘crown’ shape, it is otherwise very similar in texture and flavor to the young Saint Maure. I enjoyed it immensely on its own, with fruit, and with bread.

I did eat some non-regional cheeses as well such as Comté and Tomme, but these are cheese which can have a lot of variety depending on how they are made and aged. They are not soft cheeses, so the aging process results in saltier more intense flavors getting drier the longer they age. Also, since they are hard cheeses, it is likely to be easier to find them outside of France because import requirements for hard cheese are generally easier than for soft. If you happen to be able to find either in your local cheese section, I highly recommend trying them out.

This cheese is a 3 year aged Comté. I found it hard to describe the flavor, but apparently so does everyone else. It’s a little creamy, a little nutty, a little salty, and goes with anything. Check out a professional description here: Link

Other non-Touraine cheeses I tried while in Tours include Grand Causses, which is variety of Tomme made from sheep’s milk, 3 months aged, fruity, nutty, woodsy, and firm; and St Nectaire Fermier Du Marechal, a cow cheese, pressed, and cellar aged, with mushroom, cream, straw flavors.

I also had a couple of cheese failures. My first grocery trip in Tours I bought some Pont-l’Évêque. I got this thinking it was in the same family as brie or camembert, but it was far too “stinky cheese” even for me. The online flavor profile is described as “pronounced, rustic farmyard”. Farmyard is right! The other cheese I tried but didn’t like was Fumaison, a smoked sheep cheese, which should have been great because I love both those things, but I couldn’t enjoy it. At first I thought it was just the crust/rind that had a flavor I disliked. It tasted almost like melted plastic, so much so I thought I accidentally ate part of the plastic wrap on my first bite. I tried it without the rind, and it was less immediately “nope”, but not actually a flavor I enjoyed.

I also learned some interesting things about cheese vocabulary and etiquette on this trip. French has a LOT more words to describe cheese than English does. My teacher gave me a vocabulary worksheet on my last day as a little souvenir. There’s also some pretty strict rules about eating a shared cheese at any kind of event. Different shapes of cheese must be cut in different ways and with different tools, partly in deference to the texture, but mostly to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of the best part of any cheese: the middle.

Wine

France is obviously famous for wine, but this is an expensive hobby. I looked into trying a wine tour, but most are over 100$ and require you to get yourself out to the countryside and back. I’ll keep looking, but until then, I’m mostly just sampling things by getting a glass at a restaurant, or other random encounters.

I am not a sommelier. I do not speak the language of wine flavors, so when people go on about notes of cherry or whatnot, I get a bit glassy-eyed. I love learning about the techniques of wine-making and I appreciate that there are complex flavors across different varieties, regions, and ages which people train for years to be able to distinguish and discuss, and I think that’s an amazing part of the human experience, but… I also sometimes just want to drink delicious wine.

I’m not a fan of wines which are very sweet or very dry, I prefer a middle range. I also do not like wines which may be described as “citrusy” (I do not like “citrus notes” in my beer, chocolate, or coffee either, so this comes as no surprise). I often find that wines from California (for one example) are too acidic for my tastes. On of the reasons I fell in love with the Argentinian Malbec was its buttery, velvety taste. So, while I can’t discuss my wine tastes in sommelier terms, I know in general that I’m looking for things which are neither sweet nor dry, that do not have too many tannins, and that never would be described by any citrus fruit. When I say a wine is delicious to me, this is usually what I mean.

I did have a look at the grocery store collection, and some small wine shops, but since I’m tragically under-educated when it comes to French wines, I was rather at a loss. I discovered what I like to think of as my “favorite” French wine several visits ago when I bought a glass with a dinner and was simply blown away. It’s called Viongier, and is a delightful white wine from the Rhone Valley. It’s recently become more popular outside of France, so I’ve seen it in shops in other countries from time to time. 

During my time in Tours, I got to try a Vouvray and two types of Chinon. Vouvray is a range of white wines grown in (surprise!) Vouvray, an area just outside of Tours in the Loire Valley. They make several different types of wines including, sweet, semi-dry, dry, and sparkling. What I had was called the Vouvray Cuveé Silex. Cuveé means vintage, and Silex refers to the stone and clay content of the soil where the grapes are grown, which impacts the final flavor. I was treated to a glass at the party hosted by the pastry school and managed to snap a photo of the bottle for later reference because I liked it so much.

Chinon is another nearby region in the Loire Valley, but it produces mostly red wines. The grape used for the reds is a Cabernet grape grown on clay-limestone or sandy-clay soil (again, affecting the end flavor compared with cabernet grapes grown elsewhere) and the wines are aged in large clay pots inside of local caves. Apparently, the clay jars increase the micro-oxygenation of the wine as it ages which results in a grape-forward flavor. The caves are at a constant temperature which is also necessary for properly aging the wine. I’m told that Chinon wines are popular abroad, so I’ll have to keep an eye out now that I know about it. I had a glass with a steak lunch and felt that it held up well to the rich red meat without being in any way acidic or tannin forward – bold, but mellow.

The other Chinon wine I got to try was a gift of Philippe Brocourt Chinon Chenin, one of the rare white wines from the Chinon region. One of my teachers introduced me to this wine since the vintner is a friend of his. I enjoyed the wine very much, and was surprised to see it listed as both very dry and very acidic when I researched it online. I didn’t feel like it came close to my limit for wine in terms of tannins or acidity, yet the French seemed to think that this was the top level. I tried to find the answer, but the internet tells me American wine is actually sweeter than EU wines. It’s also possible that the wines I buy in US shops have been stored improperly and oxidized, but it seems strange that such a thing would be so pervasive. Or it could be the balance of the tannins and acidity in CA wines is just not to my liking. One day, I may learn how to pick out a bottle of wine based on the description, but I’m afraid today is not that day.

Tasting My Way Around France

When I first started international tourism (about 10 years ago now), I was often too distracted by activities and sightseeing to think of stopping for food. Although my very first trip to France in 2015 was a culinary revelation, it’s taken me a long time to learn how to prioritize food tourism, and not just view eating as something I squeeze in between museums and waterfalls. Being able to stay in Tours for so long gave me a great opportunity to ease my way into understanding local and regional specialties. As my France trip continues to unfold, I look forward to reading about and eating more such delights along the way.

A Brief Introduction to Tours

/ Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

This is part 1 of a 4 post series about the city of Tours and the 5 weeks I spent there in the spring of 2024. I didn’t set out to come here specifically. At the time I decided what I needed was to go to France, I wasn’t up for the intense labor involved in planning a vacation. Instead, I decided to use French language classes as a way decide where to go and what to do, and then I just searched the internet for a good school with a flexible start date and decent accommodations. That’s how I wound up more or less randomly spending 5 weeks in Tours, France on the banks of the Loire river.

Tours is the largest urban area of the Loire Valley, but even at the most generous standard of counting census, it’s still less than half a million people in the city and all surrounding areas. The city has a well preserved historical district called “Vieux Tours” (old Tours) which is full of old churches and half-timbered buildings giving it a very provincial town / quaint European village aesthetic. Yet, it is also equipped with a very robust and affordable public transit system and a wide array of shops, restaurants, and other entertainments. It even has an IKEA.

On the day I arrived, I went straight from the train station to my accommodation (thanks to my school). The apartment is on a quiet street adjacent to the tram line (convenient), but doesn’t have much around it except other modern blocky apartment buildings. When I looked up the photos on Google maps before arrival, I was very hesitant. I didn’t want to live in an industrial complex, I wanted to experience the quaintness of Vieux Tours! I need not have worried. Although the rows and rows of housing can seem a bit Orwellian at first glance, the reality is that there’s still immense amounts of greenery all over. My balcony overlooks a nice garden and there’s a sports field across the street. The main road is lined with trees and the tram line is grassy. While there isn’t much in a stone’s throw, a quick 10-15 minute ride on the tram drops me in Old Tours, and the lack of restaurants and bars in the neighborhood means it’s quiet when I want to rest.

My first day in Vieux Tours, I was distracted by trying to find the entrance to the school, yet I was still charmed by the half-timber buildings in the Place Plumereau (Plume Square). The building my school is in is actually part of a structure that dates back to the 11th century! Despite the fact that many new additions have been built, you can still clearly see the original masonry and timber in some parts of the classrooms.

This combination of old and new is all over Old Tours. There is a church across the street from my tram stop called Église St-Julien, and although the interior was closed to the public, I was able to walk around to the courtyard and see how the old structure merges with a new shopping complex.

A couple of tram stops down the Rue National from my school stands the Hotel de Ville (the City Hall) and a wonderful place to stroll down tree lined pedestrian avenues. 

Twice, I’ve headed to the outskirts of town, all the way to the IKEA. It was an interesting experience to see the parts of town which are not so quaint and historical as Old Tours, but I still felt like the people living in them could easily head to the cute areas of town for an afternoon whenever they liked. Neighborhoods we passed along the route varied between older building that had been refurbished or repurposed and newer apartment and shopping complexes. Everywhere did a fair job of maintaining green spaces (though perhaps not as lushly as the town center). The demographic changed starkly once I left the touristy areas, but that is hardly surprising. However, at no point did I feel like anything was dirty or unsafe.

One outing, I tried to go to the local fair, but it turned out to simply be too crowded for my liking. On the other, I was heading towards the giant box store complex next to IKEA. I think most countries now have some kind of big box store. The USA has Target and Wal-Mart. South Korea has Home Plus. In many EU places it’s CarreFour. I had been shopping at small local CarreFour Express or CarreFour City shops closer to home and to my mind those shops were plenty big. However, I needed to replace my waterproof phone case in preparation for my visit to Marseille and the only shop in the area that claimed to have any in stock was all the way back IKEA way in the biggest of big boxes. I was honestly shook by how big that store was, and it wasn’t even the only one in the complex, there were restaurants and a home appliance store as well (and the IKEA across the street). It felt like it took 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other without even going up and down any aisles! Yet, there was a bus stop right at the parking lot, which means that you don’t have to have a car to go. A nice touch.

Life in Old Tours felt slow and people seem to focus on enjoying things. Most shops are still closed when I head into my 9am class. Lunch is generally seen as 12-2 when most businesses that aren’t serving food close for at least 90 minutes to allow employees to eat. Every restaurant, cafe, boulangerie, and brasserie has sidewalk seating where people can linger over lunch and a glass of wine. There’s a glacier (ice cream shop) on almost every street. After lunch, businesses reopen between 2-3pm while restaurants close or limit service to drinks only. Dinner hours begin around 7pm when the boulangeries finally close. Even in April the sun wasn’t setting until after 9pm, giving the days a languid summer feeling. There’s simply no need to rush anything.

Unlike other tourist destinations in France where people might feel the need to run around to see all the best famous sights, the main attractions in Tours involve ambling around Old Town or strolling along the river. Although just walking through Tours on a sunny day can feel like you’re in a theme park, there’s more!  There are several museums in the town, and several château (castles / really fancy mansions) in the surrounding countryside. (both to be explored in more detail in future blog posts).

My Life in Tours

Since I’m learning the French Art of Living, my life in Tours is slow paced with a focus on relaxing and enjoying. Most days, I woke up early, had some coffee and a pastry, then went to my class at 9am. The classroom lessons were very casual, and frequently we spent more of the class time conversing in French with small side explorations into vocabulary and grammar as the conversation brings them up. There were activities, worksheets, and games, but no one was pressured to “get through a lesson” or hit target learning goals. I don’t know if that’s helpful for the long term students who are trying to pass official French language tests, but for me as a casual learner, it was ideal. My confidence in speaking French increased massively, and as a result I ended up actually using the vocabulary and grammar that I learned in class.

In just a few weeks, I went from being so obviously nervous at speaking French that every shop clerk took pity on me and spoke in English to being able to have detailed conversations about the differences of certain types of bread or cheese in the shops, and place all my orders at restaurants and shops in French without the vendors feeling the need to switch. I’m by no means anywhere near fluent, but it’s been a real boost of achievement to see my progress. Hopefully when I go to other (larger) cities in France, it won’t all fall apart.

I chose to take only the morning classes so as to have my afternoons free. Most places that are not serving food are closed until 2pm, so I tend to linger over lunch and often socialize with other students. After lunch, I wander around town, possibly to run an errand such as shopping for groceries at Les Halles, or visiting a museum or part of town that seems interesting.

In the evenings and on at least one weekend day, I rest at my rented apartment. I assigned myself a YA novel in French with the help of my dictionary for extra “homework”, and I watched Drag Race France on the France national television website, entirely in French with French subtitles. I also had boring maintenance chores like cleaning and laundry, and of course editing my photos from the day, writing in this blog, or just zoning out to YouTube videos because sometimes you need a good zone.

In addition to learning French and enjoying Tours, I have had to take part of my time to plan the rest of my French holiday. Usually I plan vacations before I get on a plane, but this trip has been … unusual. The reason I generally prefer to plan before leaving is that it’s a real struggle to tear myself away from the experiences to sit down at the computer and do research. This may seem ironic since I’m obviously sitting down at my computer to write this, but a written account of my experiences is a big part of how I process the memories and savor them. It’s a wholly different experience than researching and planning for a future adventure.

Planning vacations is hard work, but something I used to enjoy doing before COVID. I started feeling better about things in general within a few days of arriving here, but it took me about a month to be able to sit down with Google and a spreadsheet and really PLAN. Every time I tried it before, it just felt overwhelming. My friends with ADHD tell me this is their life all the time, and I honestly can’t imagine. I’m so used to being able to do what needs doing, especially if it’s also something I want! It was so frustrating, but once the damn broke, I had one 12 hour marathon day at the computer and I got it all done.

I have hotels, trains, busses, and attraction tickets (where needed in advance) for a week in Marseille, Lyon and Paris each. It may sound like a very “entitled person” problem, struggling to make plans for a vacation, but I’ve said before the only reason I can afford the trips I take is that I spend hours and hours searching for deals and researching free/cheap things to do and see. I’ve seen how much “we’ll figure it out when we get there” costs and I don’t make that much. I was watching a YouTube about the economy, and one of the guests was discussing what it was like to be a person who moved economic classes (from poor to middle) and that there’s aspects of her life now that are “normal” to those raised in the middle/upper middle class that she could never have imagined as a poor person, like being able to change your flight plans, or handle even low level emergencies.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iifU7rF0hVc%3Fsi%3DyOAGz_NNkR8c7mDY%26start%3D1085

Although my parents were middle class by the time I was born, they themselves were raised poor and changed class. And though they were both college educated, doing better than their parents, there were some years of one-step-away-from-the-trailer-park with my mom as a single parent, and some jobless-homeless-sick years for myself after I moved out. There were ups and downs, but in some ways the repeated downs only served to solidify the idea that the ups were not stable. I spent combined decades living hand to mouth, worrying about the ability to pay rent if my car needed work, needing to stand in line at the food bank, and even begging my friends for a place to stay when I lost mine.

I am still shocked at myself when I can just afford something without stressing about it, and even when planning my holidays I still carefully weigh the cost of an activity against my budget goal (perhaps even too critically). I’m getting better at giving myself permission to have nicer things, but I’m still going to be staying in (all girl) dormitory hostels for three weeks because it saves me something like 900-1,200$ total. Planning and budgeting are essential to make your money go as far as it can whether you’re on vacation or at home. 

At the time of writing this, I am hours away from leaving Tours. I feel content that I’ve seen a good amount of the best Tours has to offer, and even a chance to explore what life is like outside the charm of Old Town, providing some contrast and perspective. Stay tuned for my next 3 posts which detail the sites I visited within the city of Tours, the château of the Loire Valley, and the foods and wines of Touraine that I was able to try while staying here. À la prochaine!