On to the Loire and St. Aignan

We woke up very early yesterday in order to catch a 7:00 train to Tours via Lyon. I met my first rude French person on the second train and she was a doozy! We are still having some trouble figuring out which car to get onto and how to figure out our seats. They are only reserved on some trips, on others you just hop on and do it southwest airlines style. This particular trip, we had assigned seats. We were, for some reason, assigned seats on different cars, but in numerical order, so, if one is not an expert ticket reader, one might look at just the first ticket and think everyone was on the same car and mistakenly accuse two French woman of stealing your seats. And what might happen after that is that one of the falsely accused French woman might “phhht!” you and tell you to turn around. Let’s not assign blame, here. Let’s just say her wild overreaction to my trying to oust them from their own seats was surprising. We then went to the other car and were actually successful in ousting two valid ticket owners from their seats and they were much more polite about the whole thing. By the time we finally figured out that we had misread our tickets and kicked innocent people out of their rightful seats, it was too late to say anything without it feeling extremely awkward. We did collect a little karma when we were exiting the train, though. The doors between the cars close automatically and open when you push a lever, but they only stay open long enough for one person to get through, or in our case, one person and part of a head. I was in front of them when I heard Jack make an “aaaaahh!” sound and turned to see a breathless Chelsea helping Jack through the doors. I am very sorry to have missed it, but Chelsea said she had told Jack to wait but, he decided he’d rather not and somehow got his head stuck in the door, dropped his bags, made the noise I heard while Chelsea stopped laughing enough to free him. When everyone and Jacks head were finally safely off the train, Jack said, “The door tried to kill me.” We rented a car from Avis in Tours and this time requested a GPS. We drove the 40 or so kilometers to medieval St.Aignan. We found the place we were supposed to stay and went in to the “office”, a messy little room on the first floor of a large renovated chateau. There was a woman walking around, an obvious inhabitant of the house, and she told us hello and called for her husband. He came out and looked at us curiously. I introduced myself in French, and he said he would take us to our rooms. I was getting a very uneasy feeling because I had booked the place online through Homeaway and we were supposed to be staying in a converted stables that were on the property of the owners but was free standing and certainly not in the actual house of real people who were cooking what smelled to be boiled broccoli. He led us up some stairs and pointed out two rooms. Two bedrooms in their house and a bathroom. I was trying to avoid looking at Alton, although I already knew what he was thinking. Chelsea looked miserable; only Jack remained oblivious to our plight and was rolling around on the floor. The man asked if I would like a cot for Jack and then went to fetch one, at which point all eyeballs were on me, and they were very unhappy and angry looking. “You saw the pictures!” I told Alton, “they were very misleading! I don’t recognize this place!” The man returned and he looked confused, too. He started asking me questions and I found him hard to understand. He was asking about a zoo. Then he asked if I had telephoned to make my reservation and I told him I had booked it online. Then he asked me something else and I answered thinking my French must be truly awful. Finally, I understood him to ask what my native language was and I told him English. He slumped and shook his head, looked up and said, “I’m English.” woops! Communication was a lot easier after that was cleared up. Turns out, he thought we were someone else and we were in the wrong place. He then took us to our lovely stable, which looked just like the pictures. I don’t know who has rented those other rooms, but I feel very sorry for them. We went to bed very early last night, exhausted. Today we will see St. Aignan and some surrounding areas of the Loire.