Third Forth time lucky

Since Friday I’ve been trying to write a post about our visit to Tours last Thursday. I’ve finished the first sentence a couple of times only to be interrupted by major events like tea making or urgent ironing..

Anyway, we went to Tours for the viewing of an upcoming auction. This time we took an earlier train so that we could explore the historic part of the town during the morning. We weren’t disappointed. It’s lovely. We had a great lunch too, a little way from the very touristy part – which just seems to be restaurants and very crowded when we went back later. During the afternoon we went off to the viewing. Lots of good postcards and albums, it was hard to prepare a list, if only we could afford to buy all of them.

The best part came afterwards. We had a little time left before the train home and wondered through a little park. My attention was drawn by a huge cedar tree. Just like the one in Nimes. The cedar tree in Tours is just over two hundred years old and needs a bit of support, but is magnificent nonetheless. Rob called me over to see a poster on the wall. It was Fritz! I’d forgotten that I was intending to find out where Fritz was. When I finished reading the poster I turned around and there he was, on display. Fritz was big as elephants go. The link to my post about him, explaining his sad story with a picture is at the bottom.

When I’d finished admiring him it was time to get the train. It wasn’t too crowded, but we were still glad to be liberated at la Rochelle station. Just as we came out of the station my phone rang. Dom phoned to give me her news about what a lovely time she was having in Chicago. She was making useful contacts and her work has been appreciated by the right people. She’s got some pictures of some paintings by Monet which are in a gallery somewhere in Chicago, but I’ll probably have to wait until after her trip to England to see them. She remembered my copy of the Chicago Sun Times.. we talked for five minutes.

Since then she’s confirmed she got home safely on Saturday. I expect she’s dealing with the effects of jetlag as I write.

Now all I have to do is find the time to get this posted to my blog and wait to see if our bids were accepted. (It was then time to go for a walk so I had to wait yet again – hopefully I can do it now)

Cedar tree image

Cedar tree in Nimes

Fritz