2002 Letter from Loches in the Loire Valley: Today we visited another city with a chateau. Loche’s chateau is considerably older – old enough so that Jean d’Arc really did stay there. She came to talk to Charles VII who was there at the time. The medieval town is still pretty much intact. It’s quite an experience walking around there. The cars that you see are just an intrusion!

Our next stop was to be a town named Descartes to see the philosopher’s home which is now a museum. But we could not find the house. The French apparently believe in inconspicuous signs. Driving through France has been an education in how good the signs are in the U.S. even where they are bad! So driving to Descartes, we missed the sign for the museum (although we were both looking for it) and found ourselves in narrow streets with lots of low bridges. Ron decided he did not want to drive around any more and since we saw almost no one on the streets to ask, we just left. So, we stepped out on the same soil where Descartes had, but we didn’t get to see his home.