Wined, dined and rested.

When you are on your way home after a long summer holiday, you need something on the road back to cheer you up. You’ve meandered through France and Spain (when I say “you”, I mean “we”, obviously) trying to forget that this must come to an end eventually. You’ve done the endless but pleasurable research trying to find a nice place to stay near enough to the channel port of your choice that you can reach your ferry on time but far enough that it still feels like France and also doesn’t cost arms and legs. (In parenthesis, it is extraordinary how the price of a very ordinary French hotel room rises in direct proportion to its proximity to the English Channel and in inverse proportion to its value for money…)

 

Well, this year we found probably the best option so far to satisfy all those criteria. Our ferry from Le Havre didn’t leave until about 5pm, so we had the advantage of most of a day to travel. I should perhaps also say that in the end we gave ourselves one more night in France, in Chartres, but the journey from Tours to Le Havre takes about 3.5 hours so would work perfectly as a last night’s stay.

 

Anyway, who would have thought that Tours, centre of Loire tourism, would come up with the goods? I had found this place called “Lit en Loire” that looked wonderful, so I was a little worried that it wouldn’t live up to expectations……… pas de problème, as we say in France, tout au contraire!

 

The establishment is situated in a lovely old small ‘chateau’ (actually just a normal 18th century bourgeois home) on the north bank of the river Loire, officially in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, actually a 15 minute stroll across either the Pont Wilson or the Pont Napoléon (the Pont Wilson is the nicer walk) to the busy night-life of old Tours.

 

The building has been restored sympathetically but also with more than a nod to modern Gothic; this may sound appalling, but actually it works very well.

For example, on the one hand there was rich, heavy brocade as far as the eye could see but then they had put shiny textured wallpaper on the walls… but then (again) there was a reproduction tapestry hung over the top of that.

One of our rooms had open timbers and a chaise longue, the other had several pieces of that heavy, black marble-topped furniture that I think of as typically French ….. but with retro black and silver squiggly wallpaper. Again, it sounds quite bizarre, but somehow it worked.

Both our rooms looked over the river Loire, and from the first and second floors respectively that meant we didn’t really notice the road, although the heavy triple-glazed windows would have protected us from any outdoor noise if we had wanted them to. But what a lovely view to wake up to, the lazy Loire sauntering past our window winking at the celestial blue sky.

The Lit en Loire has enough parking spaces inside its gates for a few cars, so Hercules slept serenely beside the little garden once the gates were locked for the night, and as everyone knows it is always better to drive a happy car than a stressed one.
We walked off into Tours for our dinner that night, first thinking that perhaps the town had been evacuated because we hadn’t yet reached the bustling central area, but once we got there we had endless cafés, bars and restaurants to choose from, had a very nice meal and walked back to the hotel.

Next morning we took ourselves downstairs, the wide oak stairs creaking in a friendly fashion, and from the sunlit hall, we walked into the breakfast room which was laid out for, alleluya, a proper breakfast. In other words, instead of a trestle table to one side with the dreaded drinks machines (work of the devil) and assorted hams, jams, pastries and supermarket cereals, we had tables laid up with, yes, amazingly, a breakfast!

Their interior designer had clearly been given an especially good price on shiny materials, since even the breakfast tablecloth was made of the stuff. However the fact that we were given PROPER coffee with hot milk completely distracted me from any indigestion that such a feature might normally give me.
What a fantastic place – it wasn’t just a place to lay our heads, it was a pleasure in itself and we will most definitely be returning.