Saumur

Saumur, France

Sunday, 15 - Monday, 16 June 2008

Saumur quickly led us to realize that the smaller regions of France essentially shut down on Sundays. The station was on the northern side of the Loire, which also happened to be the more desolate side of the town (see Southern side of the Madeleine in the blog entry about Nantes). There was not a soul to be seen on the streets, and the taxi cab stand, which looked like it could easily accommodate up to 15 taxis, was completely empty. We walked across to the city centre to find what was a more packed part of the city store-wise, but equally devoid of people. It was almost like walking into a ghost town.

Walking along the main road, Rue de Franklin Roosevelt (“rue” is French for road), we looked down an alley to find a sign for a “Rouge e Noir”, “black and red.” Wanting to take a sign of what seemed to be either a strip-club or whore-house, I whipped out my trusty Canon. Seconds later, we were approached by a French woman, reeking of alcohol, who happened to be dressed in black and red. I immediately put my camera away, and just as I was about to raise my right arm to defend myself from what I thought was going to be a beating from a prostitute, she asked, in broken English, for two Euro so she could call her mother. We gladly gave her the two Euro, and she left.

We kept walking down the main street. We went inside what seemed to be an upscale restaurant, only to be told by the hostess, who also happened to have a look of shock at homeless people walking into her trendy eatery, that they weren’t open for another few hours. We settled on the only place that was going to opening soon enough, “Boite a la Pizza.” After grabbing our food and deciding to eat it at our hostel, we called a cab – we’d been told at the local tourism office that our Hostel was quite a ways away. The cab-ride to our Euro 40 room turned out to be Euro 50 one way. Equipped with our Harvard skills of critical thinking, we quickly deduced that 50 + 50 is more than what we’d pay for a hostel in the city (the Euro 40 was going to be charged regardless of whether or not we stayed at the far away hostel, since the cancellation was not 24 hours in advance).

We got a room, with one queen bed, at Hotel de Londres. Afterward, we went to a Café des Cloud to watch the Switzerland vs. Portugal soccer match, accompanied by a Saumur Rouge – a red wine from the region.

The next morning we woke up at around 10:00am and left the hotel by 11. We found a Supermarche (even if you don’t speak French, I assume you can figure that one out) and bought a big meal consisting of tomatoes, carrots, pears, grapes, bananas, milk, bottles of water, and a bottle of wine, all for about $12 a person. We then ate half of this in parking lot of the grocery store. While washing our pears by pouring water bottles onto our hands and chugging milk, it hit us with the force of the odor of a sharp French cheese that we were homeless. We got to the station at 1:05pm, just missing the train to Tours which left at 1:03pm. We’re sitting at the train station right now, on a bench on platform C, finishing off our box of groceries. Eating a box of cherry tomatoes proves to be quite acidic in the mouth.