May 22 Tours

Day two with the car. This time we drove down to Tours to see some Mantegna paintings at the Musee des Beaux Arts there. We took a different route out of town and got caught in construction. It wasn't bad driving, it's just that they are building a light rail to go into the city and it restricted us to a narrow lane going out. From a driving perspective, it was a snap because the cross traffic was light. From a scenery perspective, it was awful, with the usual ugly banlieu exacerbated by the construction mess. We finally got out to the A10, however, and enjoyed our trip through marvelous French countryside.

When we got to Tours, we went along the river and found free parking down along the quai. It was perfect. The Loire ambles at that point, but there are a lot of noisy seabirds there, wheeling about. Tours was lovely on a Sunday afternoon, quiet and provincial. It has a magnificent cathedral. From the outside it seems a bit of a stylistic mish-mash, but inside it's tall and imposing. We walked in first, but they were having a mass, so we went out and continued on to the Musee des Beaux Arts. There we saw a show on the Chateau Richelieu. The real draw was two predellas, parts of a larger altarpiece from Verona. We'd seen the central crucifixion in the Louvre, but this was our opportunity to see the two panels that surround that one. (The rest of the altarpiece, I believe, is in Verona.)


They're both magnificent. Christ rising from the grave has such immense power. I love the athletic movement as he strides out of the tomb. It feels like he is weightless, but athletic, as if he carries the weight of death's experience only in his body. It's the other panel, however, of Christ praying in Gethsemane while his apostles sleep around him, that really is one of my favorites. Christ has such power in his pleading with God, his father. You get the sincerity of his requests. On the left side in the background, you can see Judas turning backwards to ensure the Roman soldiers are following him closely to his moment of eternal betrayal. They also had a painting borrowed from the Louvre for the Richelieu show that shows Athena casting sins from the garden of virtue. It shown on the wall.

There's an enormous cedar of Lebanon in the courtyard of the museum. It was planted in 1804, and it's astounding that a 200-year-old tree can grow so large in such a relatively short time. Trees love Paris and France; they really respond to the climate here.

Another curiosity across the courtyard from the museum is a stables with a taxidermied elephant. Apparently, Ringling Brothers was in town in the early part of the century, and their elephant up and dies. Ringling "gifted" the dead beast to the town, who promptly stuffed it and displayed it. Wait, I just read a more compelling story of its death, read this blog post to get the sad and thrilling details. It was murder, folks.

After the museum, we walked next door to the cathedral, where they were practicing on the organ. It was a lot of experimentation, with discordances and strange sounds. Later, they were testing it with some fugues, but for a while, it sounded almost demonic.

The cloister of the church is precious, with a wooden-roofed second story. The gargoyles are terrific and they have some amazing faces in the stained glass. There was also some graffiti on the walls from the 1600s. I took too many pictures to post here, but the slideshow is going to be amazing.

The ride back was uneventful. We had time for a rest and then a late dinner at 10 p.m. I had wanted a simple crepe dinner, and crepes I got, but not simple. We went to a wonderful nearby place called Breizh Cafe. First, a word about the ambience. The crowd was young but not snotty, there was a kind of lively intelligence about our fellow diners. The owners and servers were all tremendously polite and efficient, and overall, even if the food had been bad, I would have had a good time. The crepes, however, were out of this world good. I had one with artichokes and ham and cheese and a sunnyside up egg. Ira had a complex one with tomatoes, anchovies, ham, and... a sunnyside up egg. Most of the varieties of crepes included an egg of some kind. There are three locations for this small chain, Paris, Tokyo, and Bretagne. My god was it good. In America, the filling is the important part, so the crepe itself tends to get lost. Here it's front and center, with a crunchy texture and rich taste, highlighted by the final brush of butter that the crepe gets as it's plated. My god, if you like crepes, you must eat here. If you don't like 'em, you must eat here. One of the best meals of the trip!

Just an illustration of how fun the ambience was. We were seated just inside, with wide french doors, so the couple seated outside were right next to us. They greeted a friend of theirs who came down to chat for about 30 minutes. During that time, neighbors walked by and said hello to the three, including a Japanese woman who was clearly a resident and her aged mother, who was clearly visiting from Japan. Friendly, intelligent, cosmopolitan. You feel better just sharing the space with these folks.