Une vacance within une vacance

Friday started out so sunny and warm I decided it was a perfect day to go to the zoo! The Zooparc Beauval is About 35 kilometres from here, so I checked the train schedule. They could get me to within a 55 minute walk (according to them) of the zoo. Sounded good. Then I checked hotels and booked one for Friday night. So far so good.

No playing until the work is done (you’ll remember that Friday is clean sheet day) so I stripped the bed, did the dishes, scrubbed the bathrooms (they have taken one decent sized bathroom and divided it into toilet room and washing room so we have two tiny rooms rather than one) and vacuumed. Now I could pack without guilt.

This is the view from La Gare (Railway station) where I got my ticket. See what a lovely day it was! Sorry about the thumb in the picture. 🙂

Remember I said there was no train. Well here’s a picture from the bus. Those traffic circles play havoc with my nausea. Can you see the clouds moving in?

I switched from bus to train at the station in Tours. They have a really nice old train station there. The kind you see in ads for Merci chocolates and old movies.

Unfortunately the washrooms at the Tours station are also old. The best washrooms so far were at the Montparnasse station. Just wonderful! Good memories.

I got on a regional train so there were no seat selections, no car numbers, and no room at all. People in the aisles. Mostly young people (20’s?) all going somewhere exciting for the weekend. They did not get off at my stop so the excitement was further down the track.

Getting off the train at St. Aignan-Noyers I realized that those double-barrelled station names are for towns that are too small to warrant a station on their own. I had hoped there’d be a local bus service to the zoo, but no such luck. I asked the station master to call me a cab and he said “okay, you’re a cab”. No, that didn’t happen. He called a taxi for me and a woman arrived in a car. There was a couple and their daughter who also wanted to go to the zoo and we shared the ride. It turned out that this woman was a medical driver. Moonlighting?

We made it to the Zoo!

And saw lots of animals.

The weather was still good so I persevered for hours. What a trooper! Good thing I’d eaten something in Tours.

This is two hippopotamuses. Hippopotami?

And a scary topiary.

There’s a lot of art around the site. Of course.

Just a few more animals and then drag my bag (which I’ve been carrying all day) to the hotel for a rest.

Is that little guy a ne-ne?

I had covered miles,and it was getting cool, so it was time to find my hotel. There were signs and I followed them, but it didn’t seem right. So I checked with Mrs. Google (using the last of my phone battery) only to find out it was WRONG. I was heading 90 degrees off from where I should be going.

Back on track I found the hotel. It was a pretty nice place. That will be my next blog.

Au revoir for now. Love to you all. Be happy.