I don't have class until 10 on Wednesdays, which means that there's plenty of time to enjoy the sites on my walk to school at the Institut de Touraine. Back at school at Western, my walk to class includes 2 residences and a short bridge over the Thames river. Here I pass a court house, a magnificent hotel (update: Hotel de ville means city hall, not hotel, french lesson :) ), crêpe stands and Boulevard Berangé, which hosts a flower market twice a week. I walked along Tours' main street: Rue Nationale and even stopped by a couple shops. Everything is better in Europe, isn't it?
My morning stroll got me a little distracted and I ended up all the way to the north end of the city where a bridge can be crossed over the river Le Loire to vieux Tours. Thankfully our family GPS (whom we lovingly named Martha) hasn't completely brainwashed me and I still know how to use a map and just needed a few left turns to get to school.
At lunch I had a picked a dessert topped with bananas and something that looked like caramel. Remember the banana flavoured antibiotics from your childhood? That's exactly what my dessert tasted like, not that that's a bad thing, those antibiotics were delicious.
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| Giant macarons! |
Class was appropriately challenging as usual and finished by 2:30, leaving me plenty of time to sit under a tree in the school's courtyard to type out my daily adventures, get my daily dose of Facebook and book my TGV ticket to Paris this Friday. Apparently it's free to enter Le Louvre this Sunday since it's the first Sunday of the month. I remember the Louvre being overwhelmingly busy even on paying days on my last two trips to Paris so we'll probably be pretty lucky if we get to catch a glimpse of Mona, Victory and Venus.
As promised, my homestay neighbour Sumira arrived today from Japan. She doesn't speak much English or French and I don't know much Japanese beyond the words sushi and sashimi so it's a bit hard getting to know her. Regardless, she seems nice so far and even gave me a gift from Japan. I guess I should have brought another bottle of maple syrup or some red mittens or something. Sadly, she doesn't like cheese but I'm sure she'll learn to love it soon enough.
I'll be heading out to tonight's planned event: an outdoor movie if it doesn't start to rain like the Weather Network is predicting. But then again, it does say that there's currently a thunderstorm going on. All I see is blue skies.
Stay tuned to read all about the high-fat, sugar-filled breakfasts I eat here but consider yourselves warned, you might develop diabetes just from reading tomorrow's post.
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