Singing in Tours

The last weekend of March, Molly's choir had a singing engagement in Tours, which (like Orléans) is a big city along the Loire River. Tours is about 120 km downstream from, i.e. southwest of, Orléans and is the last stop on most trains going that direction from Orléans. The stops made by these trains -- Meung sur Loire, Beaugency, Mer, Blois, Onzain, Amboise, and finally Tours -- include some familiar names from previous blog posts and all can be seen on the map here.

While all the other children in Molly's choir were dropped off by their parents, we had never been to Tours and so the rest of us (Dave, Cricket, and Betsy) made the train trip along with Molly. We had even made a reservation to stay overnight and return the next day so that we could see more of the city. Here is Molly next to her friend Sofie on the train.

The concert itself took place at the City Hall in Tours in an extremely impressive room that is apparently not generally open to the public. Molly's little choir joined with choirs from around the region to form one really big choir. There were a couple hundred people in attendance -- we're not sure why they were there, but it seemed to be some sort of a meeting related to regional choirs. Anyway, we sat way in the back with the few other parents of children in the big choir, where Betsy promptly fell asleep. Here is some video footage, first of Molly's choir singing while the others look on in the practice room before the concert, then of a part of the concert itself.


After the concert, we walked around Tours a bit, which is a very nice city. Here, the girls are enjoying the almost-springlike weather and simply watching the Loire.

For dinner, we walked until we came upon a really neat square filled with tables and people out enjoying the nice weather. Place Plumereau, as it is called, was clearly the right place to eat and we found a cute little restaurant. As we were finishing our meal an older couple at a table near us leaned over, asked us (in French, of course) where we were from, and congratulated us on our extraordinarily well-behaved children. Score one for trans-atlantic diplomacy!