Wednesday!  Very excited for another grand adventure!!!  David read about a town called Loches and it looked like a great place to visit.  We decided to visit on Wednesday because that is the market day there.  We had tickets on an early train to Loches so we got up at 6:00 a.m.  We had packed little sandwiches to eat on the train so we loaded up the backpack and headed out the door to walk to the train station.  On the way, we saw someone else's dinner on the sidewalk, Escargot-to-go.  Seriously?  People eat these???  David said he was really flying for a snail; he must have known he was crossing a bike path.

There were a lot of people taking the 8:16 to Tours.  We arrived in plenty of time to board the train.  On the way to Tours we ate our sandwiches and they were very good.  We had to change trains in Tours to get to Loches.  But as it turns out . . . we weren't changing "trains" at all, we had to go outside the train station and catch a bus!  Thank God for our French lessons!!!  We found the right bus, hopped on and away we went.

We saw some beautiful scenery on the way and I admit to sleeping part of the way.  I have become very unaccustomed to getting up at 6:00!  Some people got off the bus at the first sign of Loches so we followed them thinking they knew more than we did, however, we found out later that we could have ridden the bus just a little farther and gotten off right in the city center.  Oh well, lesson learned.  And we didn't have to walk very far -- only 2 or 3 blocks -- AND there was a public restroom on the way so it was definitely a good mistake, if we had to make one. 

The tourist office was right in the heart of the town so we stopped in for a map.  Right outside we saw the market spread out before us.  It was a wonderful market and it was huge.  Every street we looked down there were vendors set up. The first place we stopped had tons and tons of scarves!  I spent a long time looking at them and finally decided on a purple/black one and one that is gray, silver, gold and white.  They are both beautiful and cost 6 euro each -- about $7.61.  There were booths for clothes, boots, books, vegetables and fruit, flowers, meat, cheese, baked goods and handmade soap.  I also bought lavender and peach soap.  The market in Loches is probably 5 times as large as the one in Saint Aignan.  Of course Loches is a much larger town too.

After walking around and checking out all of  the products for sale, we turned our attention to the "Royal City of Loches."  

This is St. Antoine's Tower.  It is both a bell tower and a belfry built between 1529 and 1575.  This is the only belfry in the Tours area.

This is Picois Gate, the second defensive gate in the lower town to have survived to the present day.  You can walk through a tunnel underneath it to get to the other parts of the medieval town.

This is the Palais de Justice which interests us because of our careers in the federal court system.

The other side of Picois Gate and the Town Hall.

Street scenes we loved while walking to the Keep and the dungeon.

Santa climbing down from the third floor!
 

13th century Royal Gate.  It is the only entrance to the fortress.It was altered in the 15th century to include defense systems like a drawbridge, arrow slits and a gun platform.

These are pictures of the Keep.  It was built between 1010 and 1035!!!  It is one of Europe's oldest surviving keeps.  It was used for defense between the 11th and 15th centuries.  It was then used as a state prison and later as a county jail until 1926.  We found that amazing!

We toured the inside too, and David made a friend.

We read there were stories of some prisoners being tortured by locking them into this contraption by their ankles . . . and who knows what happened next!