A lonely hostel

Thursday, September 23 - Tours to Blois (62k)

We left our hotel early this morning in hopes of making it to Blois with plenty of time to explore (and because we got a 10 minute French scoulding from the hotel manager last night because he didn't think we were going to clean our room). We zipped right out of the city and followed the road D751 all the way to Blois. We had our fastest day of riding and were very surprised every time we looked down at our odometers. We crossed the bridge over the Loire and rode up into the charming town of Blois. It's located on a hill with lots of winding streets and buildings that all look alike. At the tourism office we ran into a Canadian woman who told us that the Chateau de Blois, located directly across from the tourism office, was free today because of the train strike. We are not quite sure how a train strike makes a chateau free, but we decided to take advantage of the opportunity. The chateau was huge! Check out the pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/111756067304857775012/TheLoireValleyDays14?feat=directlink

From there we went to our hostel which was about 5k from the city in the middle of nowhere. The hostel is an old french house covered in vines, very chilly, and has no indoor plumbing. We are making sure not to drink too much water tonight. We were locked out until 6pm, so we hung out at the picnic tables right outside of the building and utilized the free wifi. We didn't feel like biking uphill all the way back into Blois to grocery shop, so we cooked up some oatmeal in the hostel kitchen for dinner. It's a bit lonely here (we are the only guests tonight), but we are keeping ourselves occupied with the free internet access.

Tomorrow we plan to ride into Blois for breakfast, and then continue to Orleans (65k) where we will spend two nights if the accomodations are good.