A strong euro and an honest waiter

Late yesterday afternoon, we drove over to Tours for an 8:30 p.m. show at the Vinci theater in the middle of the city. It was raining off and on as we made our way over there through Montrichard, Amboise, and Montlouis and then along the Loire into the centre-ville. The drive takes about an hour.

We arrived at 7:15 and found parking on the street about 50 steps from the front door of the Vinci. We had an hour to kill, and it was still raining. We walked over to the train station and then up a pedestrian street where all the shops and cafés were closing their doors for the night. I guess Tours is not a late-night town.

Still, on the big place adjacent to the Palais de Justice and the Hôtel de Ville, we found a couple of big cafés that were open. We decided to sit down at one called the Univers, which had an awning-covered outdoor seating area out on the sidewalk where we could watch the people walk by. It was still spitting rain.

A gray, rainy May evening in Tours

It was nice to be in the city again — we don't get out that much. Walt remarked that being in town made him realize that we really are in France. We each ordered a beer, and in a few minutes the young waiter brought our two demis (half-pints). That'll be seven euros, he said, waiting for his money.

He wanted to collect right then; that always makes you think the waiter doesn't trust you to pay before you walk away. I mean after all, we were almost alone. There were four other people there, at two other tables. We weren't going to get lost in the crowd.

I fumbled to get my change purse out of my front pocket. That's where I keep change but also some paper money all neatly folded up. I opened the little purse and pulled out what I thought was a 10-euro note. I had several crisp new ones that I had gotten out of a distributeur at the bank in Saint-Aignan the day before.

As I fumbled to get out a bill, the waiter plunked three euro coins down on the table — my change. I handed him the 10-euro note, and as I did I thought to myself, "That felt thick for a single bill." The waiter turned and walked away. I watched him, wondering what had just happened. He retreated with his shoulders hunched and his arms invisible in front of him, as if he were counting the money I had just given him. But what was there to count?

The café-brasserie de l'Univers on the place Jean-Jaurès in Tours

I looked in my change purse again. I knew I had a twenty and three tens when we left home. Now I had a twenty and one ten. Merde, I said to Walt, I gave that waiter two tens, not one. He just pocketed the extra one.

"If you're sure you gave him 20 euros, go inside and tell him," Walt said. But why would the waiter admit it, I thought, and probably said. I got up anyway, and went into the big café. There was a man behind the bar who seemed to be the cashier or manager. He had a large wooden till in front of him and a collection of receipts.

"I gave the waiter two 10-euro notes instead of one for my seven-euro tab," I told him. "They were stuck together." They were brand-new bills, and you know how that happens. The waiter was nowhere to be seen, but another waiter walked by and the guy behind the bar told him to go get Christophe. In a minute, our waiter came out and I explained to him what had happened. "I know I had three billets de dix in my wallet, and now I only have one. I'm sure I gave you two by mistake."

The waiter looked at me with an expression that mean either "you've got to be crazy" or "I know you're right but I don't want to admit that I was going to keep the extra money." There was an awkward silence, and I realized there was nothing more I could say or do, so I shrugged my shoulders, said "merci quand même," and went back outside to finish my beer.

"You need to be more careful with your money," Walt said, repeating something I'm sure I've said to him a million times over the years. "Always throwing it around like it was play money..." He was rubbing it in, and I wanted to kick myself.

Three or four minutes later, the waiter came back out to our table. "Show me how you fold your bills in that little wallet," he said. I took out the remaining tenner and showed him. He produced a folded tenner too, and said he had found two stuck together in his cash pouch and folded the same way I folded mine.

In Tours, the Hôtel de Ville (city hall)

I went and counted all my money and receipts, he told us, and I think I'm ten euros over. I hope I counted right because if I didn't it'll be money out of my pocket when I cash out. I assured him I was certain I had had three bills and only one was left. He looked me in the eyes intently to see if he believed my story, and then he gave me the extra ten-euro note back. I was floored, if you want to know the truth.

It's a little thing that renews your faith in human nature. I gave him a two-euro coin as a tip and thanked him, explaining that with the current lousy state of the dollar, which is now worth about 72 eurocents, I needed to be careful with my money.

"The euro is too high, isn't it?" the waiter said. I said it certainly was in terms of the U.S. dollar. "It was better when we used francs, n'est-ce pas ?" he continued. Yes, I said. "It was better for us in France too," he said. "All our prices jumped sky-high when the euro came in."

I never thought about it that way. There's a lot of talk right now about how the euro is trop fort — too strong, too high. Sarkozy says he is going to do something about it if he's elected president on Sunday.

But I figured people who don't deal in dollars the way we do wouldn't understand exactly what "a strong euro" meant — or care. But I was wrong. Some do. They know that everything is more expensive now that it's counted in euros instead of francs, and that means that the euro is expensive too.

Ville de Tours: the old city

Tours was heavily bombarded by the Germans as well as by the Allied Forces (Americans, British, Canadians) at different times during the 1940-45 war. The neighborhoods closest to the Loire River were subjected to the worst destruction.

Les Trois Rois is a café in an old building
on the Place Plumereau in old Tours.

A few hundred yards from the riverfront, the old neighborhoods suffered less damage. The same is true of other cities in France — Rouen, in Normandy, for example. The rivers and bridges were strategic targets for both sides in the war.

The area called the Place Plumereau is surrounded by cafés and restaurants, and in warm weather the eating and drinking establishments cover the place (square) with tables where their customers can enjoy sitting outside.

There are a lot of half-timbered houses
on the Place Plumereau and along the adjacent streets.

The neighborhoods around the Place Plumereau were built and lived in by the courtiers of the French king Louis XI in the late 1400s, so a lot of the houses you see there are more than 500 years old.

The Tour Charlemagne in the rue des Halles

South of the Place Plumereau is a street called Rue des Halles and an area that was once a major religious center. It grew up around the site of the tomb of St. Martin, one of the major church figures in French history. In the 5th century, a gigantic basilica was built here.

La Tour de l'Horloge (the clock tower) in the rue des Halles

Five hundred years later, that structure burned down and was replaced by another immense church, built in about 1015 A.D. Only two towers of that edifice survive — the two in these pictures. Nowadays, where great churches once stood, the streets is lined with shops and boutiques selling luxury products.


The Cadogan guide informs me that the tomb of St. Martin of Tours was rediscovered during an archaeological dig here in about 1860. To celebrate, a new basilica was built on the site. As you can see, it's of a completely different style (neo-Byzantine). On aime ou on n'aime pas. Some like it; some don't.

These houses are on the Place du Grand Marché.

O Kalm is a play on words. Au calme, pronounced identically, means "quiet, peaceful, out of the way" in describing, for example, a house or a hotel or some other place. It might also mean eaux calmes, calm waters, which is pronounced the same way. You can read the word Heineken in small letters on the awning, so this is a bar or café.

........

Ville de Tours: restaurant menus

Yesterday I posted a picture of a ceramic rooster dressed in a cowboy get-up. A cousin of mine from North Carolina sent me an e-mail and said she had seen similar ceramic roosters in the U.S., and she thought the one I photographed must have been made by the same company as one she has at home. It's a global world, isn't it? I was glad to hear from her — it had been years.

Asides aside, I wanted to point out that Tours is about a 45-minute drive from Saint-Aignan, or a 45-minute train ride. It's a big city, but not anything like Paris. Compared to the Seine, the Loire River is very wide at Tours, and there are just four bridges — and two of those are autoroute crossings, not old stone bridges like the city's main bridge, le pont Wilson.

French cities are very compact compared to American cities, which sprawl on for miles. That said, Tours has newer, suburban-style shopping zones to the north and to the south, outside of the old town. Sometimes we go over there just to shop in the suburbs, without ever going "downtown" or into the city center.

The streets of Tours late on a Sunday afternoon.

Here are some pictures of menus. I always seem to end up examining menus closely whenever I am walking around in a French city. In France, restaurants are required to post the menu outside on the sidewalk so that potential customers can make an informed decision about their lunch or dinner. The menu also shows you the prices you can expect to pay.

The classic steak-frites

Because menus change frequently, they are often hand-written on a chalkboard, like the one above. It's a pretty simple one: you can choose from (a) steak, or (b) steak! Both steaks are served with home-made French fries (frites maison) and green salad (salade verte). The meat is from cattle raised in France (viandes françaises) . Bon appétit !

The two steaks you can choose from are: a rib-eye (entrecôte) with béarnaise (sauce), which is a mayonnaise-type sauce made using shallots and tarragon cooked in vinegar; or a sort of skirt steak (onglet) served with a sauce made of shallots that are stewed slowly in butter or vegetable oil. Entrecôte béarnaise is shorthand in French; everybody knows that béarnaise is a sauce and not something else like a kind of steak or a way of cooking it. The Béarn is an old province down in the Pyrénées Mountains where the sauce was supposedly invented.

I have to check this place out more closely the next time
I'm in Tours to see what the menu looks like. The name
means "Eat Me" and that doesn't give you a clue.

Green salad is a standard item in France. No, it's not elegant, and I know people who think salads with just lettuce in them are really boring. But a good helping of fresh greens is an important dietary component that balances out a meal, and fresh greens are delicious and refreshing when dressed with a good vinaigrette (which they always are in France). Sometimes you get a mixture of different kinds of greens, but often it's just green leaf lettuce or what we would call Boston lettuce. It's never iceberg.

You won't find American-style salads made of half-a-dozen ingredients (lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, green peppers, croutons, onions, and on an on) with sweet or creamy dressings. That's seen, I think, as too complicated and too rich to be included as just one part of a meal. In France, the standard salad that accompanies a meal is made of lettuce and vinaigrette, and vinaigrette is made of a little Dijon mustard, a little vinegar, and some vegetable oil, all whipped together.

Another very simple menu written directly on the glass doors of a
restaurant in Tours. It features what is called a pièce du boucher —
the "butcher's cut" — which is... guess what? Steak! And it's served with
French fries and a green salad. You can order a sauce of your choice
with the steak, all for €6.90. It's typical lunchtime food. There's also
a seafood au gratin dish (Cassolette Océane) and beef burgundy
(Boeuf bourguignon) if you want something other than beefsteak.

What you do find is cafés and restaurants that serve salades-repas — salads that constitute a whole meal. One such salad is a salade niçoise — greens, steamed green beans, tomato wedges, cold boiled potatoes, olives, and tuna, with vinaigrette. Other lunch or dinner salads can include ham, lardons, hard-boiled eggs, different cheeses like blue or Swiss or goat, artichoke hearts, corn, and so on. But they are dinner salads, and only become part of a meal when smaller versions of them are served as starter courses.

Another good starter featuring vegetables is a salade de crudités [kroo-dee-TAY], which is sliced tomatoes, diced beets, grated carrots, shredded cabbage, diced boiled potatoes, and maybe a sliced hard-boiled egg, served as separate little salads on a plate and dressed with vinaigrette. It's a salad but not a tossed salad.

In France, salade verte, the simple tossed green salad, is usually eaten after the main course, not before. Or with the main course when you're having a simple, quick meal like a steak and fries or a pizza. These days, you don't always get salad as part of a meal in a restaurant.

And by the way, the entrée in a French meal is the starter or appetizer course, not the main course. I don't know how we ever ended up using the word "entree" in America to mean "main course," when it so obviously means the "entry" into the meal, the starter.

Another very confusing difference between French and American usage has to do with the word "menu." In France, what we call the menu is called the carte — that's why you order à la carte when you want to pick and choose your food from different offerings rather than order a set-price meal.

A menu in French is a full meal made up of several courses at a set price. You can't normally do substitutions. Often you get a choice of entrées (the French meaning), a choice of main courses, and a choice of desserts. Sometimes there will be a salad course before dessert, and sometimes there will be a cheese course, either before dessert or in its place.

A much more elaborate menu (in the French meaning)

My interpretation of the last menu pictured is that you can order a combination that costs €9.90 or a combination that costs €11.40. For the lower price you probably can have either a starter + a main dish, or a main dish + a dessert. For the higher price, you get all three courses.

And there are six or seven choices for each course. The name of the restaurant is Le Picrocole. Here's a loose translation of that menu.

• Warm country-style salad
  (probably with lardons or ham, maybe potatoes)
• The chef's special pâté, with prunes in it
  
• Fricassee of duck with garlic and parsley
  (served cold? I wonder...)
• French onion soup (with melted cheese on top)
• Salad with Touraine Galipettes
  (?? — you got me on that one)
• Touraine-style salad with potted pork
  (pork rillettes are a Touraine specialty)
• Eggs baked in a chive-cream sauce
  

• Touraine boiled dinner (probably pork,
  sausages, or chicken with vegetables)
• Stuffed vegetables (a house specialty)
• Skirt steak with stewed shallots
• Chicken leg with olives and lemon
• Fish en papillotte (a foil or paper pouch) with fresh herbs
• Pork cheeks cooked in a cream sauce
• Tripe "the way we make it"

• French toast
• Caramel custard (like a Mexican flan)
• Rice pudding flavored with vanilla
• Pear poached in Earl Grey tea
• Fromage blanc (like yogurt) with apricot puree
  
• Clafoutis with prunes (a kind of pudding cake)
  
• A salad of caramelized oranges

Window shopping in Tours

In French, "window-shopping" is called lèche-vitrines — literally, "window-licking." I'm sure the expression has to do with the fact that the French verb allécher means "to tempt, to attract." Something that is alléchant is appetizing and tempting — it makes your mouth water, as we say. Actually, shop windows are often amazingly tantalizing in France.

This being France, there's nothing surprising about
seeing a window display featuring snails and frogs.
These are literally appetizing, don't you know?

Licking windows was how we entertained ourselves on a Sunday afternoon in the city of Tours, as we were waiting for a friend's early-evening train to arrive from Paris. The weather wasn't very warm, but the light was good and the windows were entertaining.

In Tours, there were a few people out late on a Sunday afternoon.

I'm pretty sure the street in the picture above is the rue des Halles ("Market Street"), which runs from the old marketplace to the city's main shopping street, the rue Nationale. For some reason, chickens seemed to be in style as a shop-window theme when we were there.

Nobody here but us...

Here are some things to know about Tours. It's a city of about 300,000 that is the capital of the ancient province called Touraine, which is known as the garden of France (le jardin de la France). Centuries ago, the French kings traveled here from Paris and built grand residences so that they could come and enjoy the nice summertime weather. It's also wine country.

In Touraine the purest French is spoken, people have always said. The accent is not regional, but national, while Parisians (like New Yorkers) have a distinct accent. By the way, the final -s of Tour is silent. Pronounce it [tour] like the English word.

A country & western rooster wearing a cowboy hat,
a bandana, chaps... and a saddle

The cooking of the Touraine region is not regional either. There are some regional specialties, but not many. Marseille has its bouillabaisse and ratatouille, Castelnaudary and Toulouse their cassoulet, Brittany its crêpes, and Alsace its choucroute, but Touraine just has standard, internationally recognized French cuisine. It's what you eat in the best French restaurants all around the world.

Striped chickens?

The Touraine province is the heart of the Loire Valley, which is French château country. Close to Tours are the famous royal châteaux of Chenonceau, Amboise, Azay-le-Rideau, Villandry, Chinon, Chaumont, and Chambord. But the city is much older than those monuments. Tours dates back to pre-Roman times, and it was a major Roman city in the first centuries of the Christian era. Both the Loire River and the Cher River run through Tours.

Peering into the windows at the porcelaine blanche shop

Tours is one hour from Paris by high-speed train (the TGV) and two to three hours by car on the toll road called the autoroute, depending on traffic. It has been called « un petit Paris » because it is a pretty city, though is was much bombarded in the 1940-45 war and a lot of it is fairly modern by French standards.

The Cadogan guide to the Loire actually uses the terms "glamorous" and "vibrant" to describe Tours. I never thought of it that way until now, but it's true that on a nice sunny afternoon, strolling the main streets, the flower market, and the outdoor food markets can be a very nice way to spend some time.