Book review of From Tours to Paris by Linda Kovic-Skow

My review today is for From Tours to Paris the second memoir in the French Illusions series from Linda Kovic-Skow about her time spent learning French, in France, in 1979/1980.

French Illusions book two

I finished Linda’s first book French Illusions (see my review here) feeling like she had left us just as her life in France was about to get interesting; things were not going well with the family she was living with as an au pair, but she was in love and determined to stay in France and learn the language. I wasn’t wrong! I am so glad she wrote this second book as it’s much more juicy and exciting than her first.

It had been a while since I read book one and although I remembered the basics, a little bit more of a recap at the beginning of this book would have helped me to slip me back into the story, which picks up where book one left off. But what a story! Linda is very honest about the good and bad times she experienced while living a students life in Tours, struggling with finding accommodation, making friends and balancing her studies with her relationship. She portrayed really well the highs and lows of young love, feelings of homesickness and money worries.  There were moments when things got so intense I had to take a break, but it wasn’t long before I was wondering how her situation would be resolved and I was back within the pages.

It was an emotional time for Linda; events at home in the US and in France left her feeling vulnerable and alone, feelings that made her question where her future lay and what career path would be best for her. I think it would be true to say she learned a lot more then just French from her time in France. This book is a lovely insight into life in France thirty years ago, seen through the eyes of a young American. Thanks for sharing your story Linda.

Linda’s books are available in paperback or ebook format, individually or as a box set from Amazon, which currently gives a saving of almost £2.

Book review of French Illusions by Linda Kovic-Skow

I’m posting this review today as Linda Kovic-Skow’s book French Illusions: My Story as an American Au Pair in the Loire Valley (Book 1) is currently on promotion on Amazon Kindle and reduced to 77p for a limited time.

This memoir is set in the late 1970s in a chateau in the Loire where Linda, a young twenty-something, arrives from the US to perfect her French as an au pair for a year. It is her dream in life to work for an airline, but to do so she must have a foreign language and she will stop at nothing to fulfil her dream. Linda’s determination and strength of character are two of her traits that stood out for me during the book, especially as she put herself in a very awkward position. Her host family were expecting their third child imminently so hormones and emotions were running very high throughout the chateau when Linda arrives in their lives. They were also expecting her to be a competent French speaker, but she wasn’t and this made settling in even more difficult and not just for Linda. I can’t begin to imagine how different and difficult life in this chateau with two young children who don’t speak your language, a grumpy new mum and a tiny baby, must have been for Linda. This was years before the Internet, so contact with friends back home was limited to letters and an occasional phone call to her parents. I do know I’m not as brave as Linda and could not have done what she did, but she seems to have given the experience her best shot. Life wasn’t easy, but her language begins to improve, she meets some friendly faces and shares some lovely snippets of French family life and student life in and around Tours and the Loire. It was an interesting peek into a different life in a different era.

I know Linda is currently working on the second part of her time spent in France, but I would have liked this book to carry on a little longer. There is quite some excitement towards the end and then she just leaves us. This is great to ensure interest in the story for book two, but it felt a bit abrupt for me as I think her real adventure in France is just about to begin. I will be looking out for book two.

French Illusions: My Story as an American Au Pair in the Loire Valley (Book 1) is available in ebook and paperback format and links to Amazon can be found below.

Cycling the Loire part two

Place St Pierre, Saumur

Here is part two of our cycling trip to the Loire, you can read part one here. 

Despite our packing being very minimal, (even the hotel owner was surprised by our lack of luggage), we had packed a change of clothes for an evening in town and I even had a pair of flip flops to wear with my sundress too. Saumur was a lovely place to stay and after a stroll around town we enjoyed a spot of people watching over a refreshing beer in the Place St Pierre before eating in an Auberge in Rue St Nicolas where we sampled the local speciality of fouées for the first time. This is a bread cooked in a wood fired oven that puffs up to form a pocket you fill with local delights including goats cheese, white beans, garlic butter, lardons, rillettes and a confit of onions and blood sausage. It was delicious and full of carbs, which was ideal to replace our energy.

Fouées, a local speciality

As cyclists, the following morning we were allowed cheese with our French breakfast – an option not given to the other residents at the hotel and one we made good use of. It was then time to head back towards Tours, taking the river route past some interesting cave houses to Montsoreau, where we stopped for morning coffee. I have to admit it wasn't much further on when we stumbled upon the delicious aromas coming from a patisserie - it really wasn't an option to cycle past!

Cave houses

The Chateau at Montsoreau

Looking back to Montsoreau

The patisserie, a girls best friend

We again found ourselves cycling towards the beautiful chateau at Rigny-Ussé where we left the Loire and followed the road to Azay-le-Rideau eventually finding somewhere willing to serve us a croque-monsieur for lunch – we seemed to have our invisibility cloaks on again! Despite the chateau at Azay-le-Rideau being very beautiful the view from before the ticket office isn’t so great and we really didn’t have time to pay to enter any of the chateau on this trip. The run back to the Loire at Villandry was shady and cool and by the time we reached the car we were delighted to have clocked up 200km in our two days.

The Chateau at Rigny-Ussé

We were lucky that the weather was lovely and warm, sunny and more importantly dry, as we really are fair weather cyclists only. I suppose ideally a little cooler may have been nice, but the sun really gave our two days a proper holiday feel and much of the route was shaded by trees. The architecture is so different to where we live it was difficult to believe we were only a two hour drive from home.

What struck me a lot along the way was the number of cyclists we saw who were many years older than us, often with their panniers and trailers full of camping equipment and still with a friendly smile, nod of the head and a bonjour to share with us. The Loire really is a cycle friendly area that I can recommend to anyone with an interest in cycling in France, not just serious cyclists. As well as the Loire, Cycling Southern France - Loire to Mediterranean by Richard Peace also has many other great routes from the Loire down to the Mediterranean and was a very useful book for us that we will use again.

If you fancy a Loire break with or without your bike, I have a couple of friends with holiday accommodation and there are many others on our Special Places in France website. My friend Nicole (we grew up in the same road in Surrey in the 1970’s) and her husband have three beautiful gites to the southeast of Tours. We visited them a few years ago so have seen for ourselves how special their place is and you can see details on their website here. To the west of Tours, Facebook friends Le Chant d’Oiseau, have gites and a campsite (see website here). We haven’t visited them (yet), but we have seen the tasty photos of the soirées they hold where they cook pizza and fouées in their wood fired oven, the stuff holiday dreams are made of.

I hope you have enjoyed our Loire holiday pictures; it really is a very beautiful place in France. Now where to take our bikes next?

Cycling the Loire Tours to Saumur

This time last week, having eaten our fill at the Quick Palace hotel buffet breakfast in Tours we set off for two days of cycling along the river Loire with a bit of Chateaux spotting. Since getting back I think I have spent most of the week in the kitchen as we found ourselves somewhat over run with cherries, raspberries and courgettes. I have baked quiches and cakes and started stocking the cupboards with chutneys and relishes, however it meant neglecting the blog.

After the madness and excitement that was The Tour de France in Tours it was with a little reluctance that we headed out to the west of the city on Friday morning. The further out of town we got and the more peaceful it became, the more we knew we had made the right decision not to stay with the buzz in Tours awaiting the lunchtime departure of the cyclists. The Tour might have been over for us but we still had a good few kilometres to tackle on our own little tour of the Loire.

Morning coffee in Savonnières

The plan was to follow the river Loire from Tours to Rigny-Ussé, cross the river Indre, then loop down to Chinon before following the river Vienne back to the Loire and on to Saumur. This route is well documented in Cycling Southern France - Loire to Mediterranean by Richard Peace, however we didn’t have the space to carry the book with us, but following big rivers, on the flat, how difficult could it be? Well, despite the Loire being a cyclist heaven with over 800km of marked cycle paths and many cycle friendly hotels and campsites it wasn’t actually as easy as I thought. It wasn’t long before the path veered away from the river and then horror of horrors, became a cobbled track. I am a 41 year old body cycling a 30 year old road bike and neither of us do cobbles. The benefits of heading back to the road were that tarmac is a much faster surface for our thin tyre bikes and we followed the route Le Tour had taken the previous day, so the villages and roads were decorated on a cycle theme.

Cobbles are a no no!

The bridge over the Loire in Langeais

We lunched on pasta and tinned fish, perfect energy food, having seen Villandry (from afar), the lovely bridge at Langeais and got a great view of the Rigny-Ussé chateau that morning. The afternoon took in Chinon, where we stopped for a beer, some lovely shady cycling by the river Vienne then the beautiful village of Montsoreau. 

Chinon

The Vienne river

Pretty displays in Montsoreau

We were only about 16km from our overnight stop in Saumur but tiredness and the heat were starting to show. When given a choice of a 14km route via the river or a 12km route via the vineyards, we decided to head uphill and save a couple of kilometres. Well, the views were superb, but unfortunately the signage wasn’t. We must have covered at least an extra 10km with lots of hills and lots of heat that necessitated a walnut break under the shade of a tree. The final zoom down from the Chateau in Saumur to our hotel was a fantastic feeling and we felt rather pleased with ourselves having covered 95km.

The Loire vineyards

Saumur

The Cithotel was very welcoming with a safe storage area for the bikes and a clean and comfortable room. Never has a short bath in a two-tone peach hotel bathroom seemed so welcoming as that night!

Bliss!

Do join me again tomorrow with part two of our adventure.

My Tour de France highlights

The blog has been a bit quiet as we have spent a few nights away from home on a cycle themed break. First stop (after dropping Mum, Dad and Ed at the station to make their way to UK) was the city of Tours in the Loire, our base for the night and where we caught up with some Tour de France action. Here are some photos of the publicity caravane, which is a real carnival atmosphere, the cyclists themselves and our evening in the lovely city of Tours.

At the 1km to go marker

The caravane begins

The LCL Lion

Cochonou saucisson 

PMU BIG HANDS

My hands - very useful when you have arrived by bike

More booty to try to get back to the hotel

Mark Cavendish and Chris Froome at the 500m to go point

An evening beer in the city of Tours

Tours old town, a very pretty little square

A Tour de France themed dinner at Courtepaille

The Courtepaille Grill chain of restaurants are the official 'grillade' of the Tour de France. They have a publicity team handing out vouchers and games in the caravane, their staff wear Yellow Tour T-Shirts, their menus are yellow and #TDF themed and even their terrace umbrellas match the colours of the winners jerseys. As we had picked up a few 'buy one get one free' vouchers we thought it appropriate to eat there in the evening and we weren't disappointed. We had a delicious steak and chips, the perfect energy packed meal for the night before our own cycle tour along the Loire river. The restaurant and our hotel were on an out of town estate and also happened to be where many of the caravane, press and other Tour officials were also staying, which just added to the party atmosphere of a very exciting day.

The Courtepaille floats staying in the hotel next door