To get from Tours to Paris we decided to take a train, since it was only a short ride away. The day before we were set to leave Tours we stopped into the train station to get our tickets early. We thought it would be pretty easy, but our tourist French didn’t quite hold up when we were buying our tickets. We were able to come up with a complete sentence, memorize it, and recite it to the lady behind the ticket window. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as...

Bill: So, I’m sitting at an ancient wooden desk right now, in a cozy little French bedroom on the top floor of the antique Hotel val de Loire, gazing out of the skylight of our low angled ceiling at the moon. This is our second night in Tours, France—and it’s been grand so far. Our trip from Inverness to Stansted was concise, with the flight only over an hour. We were able to call the nearby ‘Bushel and Sack’ hotel that we had reserv...