Day 25, Friday, September 22, 2023
Today we explore Tours. Our apartment is within easy walking distance of downtown. First stop is the Tours Train Station which is one of the prettiest train stations in France. The architect is the same one which designed the station which is now the Musée d’Orsay . I can see the resemblance. The inside is decorated with tiled pictures of French towns and chateaus.
We pass a little patisserie and buy couple treats for our tea time. So far I am able to have the odd gluten treat with no ill effects, although I am sensitive to gluten at home. They were delicious!
We visit the garden behind the Beaux Arts Museum and see this phenomenal tree! It is an enormous Lebanon Cedar with a height of 31 metres, a width of 33 metres and a trunk with a circumference of 7.5 metres! It is a magnificent tree. 
I love big trees, and this one is one of the biggest I have seen. It has enormous cones, and long arching branches, some of which lie along the ground. Pictures do not do it justice.
There are flowers and lots of benches. The device just above the red flowers is used so that the gardeners can sit or perhaps lie down and weed without having to walk in the flower beds.
This is Fritz the Elephant. He died in 1902 in Tours. Please take moment to read about his tragic death. He was stuffed and is on display in the gardens. https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2017/05/26/fritz-the-elephant/ 
St. Gatien Cathedral is very ornate. 
The decorative work on the outside of the church is very delicate and beautifully carved.
This interesting coffee shop/art gallery was under part of a building and open to the street.
Tours has horse drawn wagons!
These medieval buildings lean out over the street. Each floor extends a bit further out than the one below. Note the interesting carvings on the grey building. There is just so much to see everywhere.
This photo has an interesting story. We were having tea and I noticed that there was a large duffel bag sitting unattended on a bench some distance from us. It made me rather nervous. We have seen signs to be aware of abandoned bags or other unusual activity. Several people walked by and looked at the bag, but just kept walking, until this fellow walks by, turns around and sits down beside the bag. He sits there for about 5 minutes, then casually stands up, looks at the bag, picks it up and quickly walks away. Pretty sure the bag wasn’t his. Tours is a university town and Bob figures someone just forgot their bag, but I wonder how anyone leaves a big duffle bag behind.
On the walk home we pass this flower store. If we had a bit more room in our apartment I would have bought some flowers, they were so beautiful and not terribly expensive.
But then we enter the display area for the Apocalypse Tapestry and we are utterly astonished. This is the largest medieval tapestry in the world!
This information gives a brief history of this incredible tapestry.
Another interesting panel…well, they are actually all very interesting.
There are usually 5 monks and 7 nuns who live at the abbey and there are only 25-30 people who actually live on Mont Saint Michel. We sat and listened to part of the mass, from the side of the church. The singing was really lovely and I found it interesting that the nuns and the priest sat on the floor of the church during the service.
There are so many interesting doors in this abbey.
There are so many smaller rooms and interesting spaces to be explored. This one is off the side of the crypt.
When the Abbey was used solely as a prison in the 1800’s, this huge wheel was was used to haul supplies up to the abbey. Prisoners walking inside the wheel were able to raise and lower a cart along a stone ladder inclined along the rock wall. 
We hear shrieks and peals of laughter and realize that is is coming from the people out walking on the sands now that the tide is out. Some of them are thigh deep in the water! There are a lot of people out there, some of them way off in the distance. Thanks, but I am happy to pass walking in mud and cold water.
Bob took interesting photos of the inside and outside view of these two stained glass windows.
…interesting details…
…crooked roof lines…
The walls below are as thick as these walkways.
.Checking out the view…
…and here is the view. The tide is already starting to go out and more beach is visible.
This is the same ‘island’ that we saw earlier…
When we arrived the water was almost up to the white part of this lighthouse..
The tapestry is located in a darkened room with only the tapestry illuminated, no photos allowed. It was created in the 11th century, so it is almost a thousand years old! It is actually an embroidered cloth, and not a tapestry. There is another room with a replica of the tapestry displayed where photos are allowed. The original tapestry is displayed in a very similar manner. This monumental work is almost 70 metres long and 50 centimetres tall. It depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest and culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
One more view which shows the unique towers on the front of the church.
We must be tired because we have a hard time finding our apartment, in spite of driving right by it about 4 times! Google maps seems to show it in the wrong place, but we eventually manage to sort it out and our host is waiting for us. She only speaks French but I understand most of what she is telling us about the apartment. Here is our home for the next five days.
We discover a semaphore station built in the early 1900’s on the same site as an old lighthouse built in the early 1800’s. There are also more World War II bunkers here. Not surprising since they were built all along the coast of France. The three pillars were to hold radar equipment, but it was never installed, and there are several Tobruks, or machine gun nests.
One of several large bunkers.
“The Rouen Natural History Museum is the 2nd most important natural history museum of France after the museum of Paris thanks to its collections richness and diversity (ornithology, ethnography, botany).” ~from Rouen Tourist Information
The strange line on the back view is part of a tattoo. I usually don’t draw tattoos, but this one followed the contours of the back so I included it.
The Normandy landings took place on Tuesday 6, June 1944 . Code named Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was, and still is, the largest seaborne invasion in history. This is a big museum with lots of displays. There are examples of the uniforms worn at this battle.
trudymason.com 