Les Châteaux de la Loire (Castles of the Loire)

We went on a three day excursion to go see the châteaus in the Loire Valley. This includes all the famous ones people know, such as Chenonceau or Chambord, and also far less well known ones. (When I type a name, such as Blois or Lingeais, I mean that chateau, not a city. Usually they were cities too, but we didn’t go visiting cites; we went a-castling.)

Thursday

Today we went to Blois, which was pretty, but it was a good thing it was first; otherwise nobody would have cared since we’ve seen so many amazing chateaus this week. We also went to the city Amboise and its Chateau de Clos Lucé, which is where Leonardo da Vinci lived for three years (and also where he died). It didn’t look like a chateau, and in fact until looking it up later I just thought it was a house with extensive grounds. The house was neat and cool, as they had many models of his inventions all around and interesting facts, such as “this is the room in which he painted his painting of John the Baptist.” The grounds, however, were amazing!

At first, I was just struck by how beautiful they are – a miniature forest with some fields and some little swamps…no wonder he made inspired paintings! Soon, however, you appreciate all the work the people who made this a sort of memorial put into it – scattered throughout all his grounds, there are life-size models of his inventions (and most of them are functioning!) and little descriptions of them. There were perhaps 12 of these models that I saw (and I didn’t get everywhere) and there are also lots of sort of silk-screens of his paintings/sketches that are huge hanging from trees all over the grounds, and they are really impressive. These grounds were my very favorite thing about this whole weekend – they were amazing!

Food, the Good: We had an amazing dinner tonight, too. It had an amazing sort of stew dish which I forgot the name of – I’ll ask, though, since I plan to make it pretty much every day when I get back to the US. It had white beans and duck meat and an amazing gravy/sauce and was AMAZING! We also had the best dessert I’ve had here, which was chocolat fondant, which was also marvelous.

Friday the 13th

In France, Friday the 13th is actually a really lucky day. Lots of people buy lottery tickets and look for signs on that day. Our day started out nicely, then, when we saw a little gray kitten outside Villandry. It came right up to me and climbed on my lap as I knelt to pet it. The daughter of our directors named him Leonardo da Vinci, and he let me pick him up and let me/the daughter (but she kept almost dropping him, so I was the delegated holder while she petted) carry him for almost ten full minutes as we wandered the gardens. (We didn’t even go inside the chateau, since this one’s only famous for the gardens.) As it turns out, it wasn’t so lucky, since my good friend is allergic to cats and had to move from her seat next to mine for the rest of the day after she sniffed and looked at me accusingly – “You were WEARING that sweater when you HELD it!”

Then we went to Lingeais, which is the “most medieval” chateau in this valley. This was very cool – we got to walk along the ramparts, which are that little bit along the tops of towers/castles that looks like it sticks out a little bit and has little windows in it. I didn’t know that this was actually a place for guards/etc. to walk around in, and it was really cool. An important thing to remember about medieval castles is that they weren’t built for beauty; they were built for defense, which is why they’re usually nondescript and fortress-like. I think we might have made our director’s wife (who is Romanian) roll her eyes as we walked the ramparts singing, “…and the raaaaaamparts we walked were so gallantly streaming!” and making up other phrases of our national anthem that were appropriate to the castle. I don’t think the ramparts they watched were of this kind, though.

We took a quick peek at the exterior of Chateau d’Ussé, which was the model for the castle in Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.” After that, we went to Azay-le-Rideau which was another of my favorites. We (the director’s daughter, I, and another girl who somehow ended up exploring all the castles together) called it the Beauty and the Beast castle, since it was surrounded by a little forest and was quite lovely. It was very fun and surrounded on 3 sides by a lake/river thing, and it was really cool. There was another cat on the pathway to/from the chateau who let us pet it and it was black (Friday the 13th! Black cats! Lucky us!!) and it was sleepy (so much so that it hadn’t moved when we came back, and leaves had fallen on it) and we named it Catherine de Medici. I miss my kitties at home now! The director was actually half talked into taking the first one (we were informed by a worker that it was a stray but a friendly one) home, since their daughter’s birthday is in a week anyway, but then there’s the whole bus/going to the bathroom cat problem.

Saturday

This morning we went to go see Chenonceau, which is the picturesque chateau that spans across a river. It was quite large and one of the “top two” chateaus of the valley. It had really nice long halls across the river with windows on both sides from which you could see the river and boats going under it. It also had very fun kitchens, and had these squashes/gourds that were tall and skinny and green, so at first they looked like candles: more specifically, like when Shrek pulled out his earwax and used it as a candle. On the grounds, our little chateau-exploring group (the two of us plus the cute 8 year old girl, Anna-Marie) took the opportunity to teach Anna-Marie (us being LDS girl’s camp veterans, and A-M being neither) the songs “The Princess Pat,” and many others. We gave her candy, too – her poor parents are going to hate us. She’ll probably go around singing “A rigabamboo! Now what is that? It’s something made by the Princess Pat…” for weeks.

Then we went on to Chambord (the other “top two”) which was IMMENSE. The first thing you notice, however, is the roof. It looks like a city up there. It is truly amazing – something like 200 chimneys, all decorated beautifully in an amazingly organized pattern. I spent most of my time there on the roof (there’s a roof balcony thing) and it is completely beautiful – my other favorit-est thing of the trip. It reminded me of Bert’s singing in Mary Poppins, only minus the smoke and London: “Up where the smoke is all billowed and curled, ‘tween pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world. Where there’s hardly no day, nor hardly no night, worlds off in shadows, off way and wide. On the rooftops of London…ooh, what a sight!” We (my little castle club!) sang this together some several times here, it is true.

Summary: We saw eight chateaus (ten if you count the two we walked past to get to our destinations, and many more if you count the drive), and spoke French lots, and petted kitties and ate amazing food and didn’t shower and lost my deodorant, and filled up my entire camera memory card, and decided what specific digital camera I am going to buy since I’ve discovered that mine is dumb, oh oh oh! and used my friend’s digital micro-focus to take close up pictures of our eyes, and slept on the bus but not at the hotel, and ate bread for breakfast and it was, all of it, GREAT!