Day 11 The Loire - St-Emilion and Tours

One night  in Bordeaux and we are off to the Loire Valley. Before we started our four hour drive to  Loire we visited St-Emilion one of the principal red wine areas of Bordeaux. The Romans planted vineyards in this area as early as the 2nd century. The town was named after the monk Emilion. It was the monks who followed him that started the commercial wine production in this area.

Back on the bus for our four hour drive to the Loire Valley in central France. Our next stop was Tours (don't pronounce the s). The architecture of the old town is characterized by 15th century buildings made of red brick and wood beam supports. Much of these structures were burned in fires set by German air raids during WWII when the city burned out of control for several days.  Today the town is filled with shops and restaurants.  After a quick walk through old town we were given some free time to explore.

In 1492 Joan of Arc slept in a room in this building which is commemorated with a plaque.

Back on the bus to our hotel about an hour away in a town called Azay le Rideau. Although our building is over 500 years old, the hotel for the most part has been modernized. The streets here are so narrow that our bus had to be parked a block a way while we dragged our luggage uphill over cobblestone to the hotel. Since there are no elevators we had to carry our luggage up the narrow staircase.  Good thing we are here for two nights.

The upside to our hotel was its location.  We were a block away from the Azay le Rideau castle and there was a music festival going on this weekend.  With the sun setting at 10:00 p.m. we had extra day light hours to walk the town and listen to music.