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Tue Jul 24 2007: French Castles in the Loire Valley

Woke up at 7AM today, Neda doing her Yoga, me doing my Internet before we leave. After a quick continental breakfast at the Manoir, we head towards Amboise, home to one of the castles in Neda's shortlist of places to hit in the area. Neda's a huge fan of castles from back when she was a kid, me - not so much. The weather is very overcast but the forecast doesn't call for rain. I'd hate for this trip to be like our Cali trip last year, rain almost every day! Amboise is about 25 km south of Tours, and it's a pleasant ride through some scenic French countryside.

Cypress trees are everywhere in northern France. These tall, skinny trees are practically
synonymous with the French countryside. These aren't very good pics of them though.

Approaching Amboise across the Loire River

Amboise: Two castles in this village!

As we approach Amboise we see this huge castle which we thought was the Chateau Clos Lucé, the final home of Leonardo Davinci. After parking and walking up to it, we found out it's actually Chateau D'Amboise, the home of King François I, a close personal buddy of Leo's. Clos Lucé is actually down the street as Frank set Leo up with his own pad for the last three years of his life. We toured the gardens and inside the Chateau, lots of replicas and copies of Leo's manuscripts and inventions. From Leo's window, we could see into the courtyard, but also Frank's Chateau as well. Frank was so close to Leo that he was with him on his deathbed, quite downstricken.

Chateau Clos Lucé

The view from Leo's room. You can see the garden,
but Leo liked to look at his buddy Frank's castle in the distance.

Ate breakfast at a baguette place across Chateau D'Amboise, and hit the second stop in Neda's castle tour, Chenonceaux. Just over 10 km south of Amboise, it's close enough that they've set up a very scenic bike path between the two towns. Chenenceaux is huge, with sprawling grounds and moats and typical fairy-tale castle stuff. Neda says that this Chateau inspired the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty. I can believe that, as some kind of spell fell over me and I slept for over an hour on the park bench while Neda toured the castle and the grounds. I was awoken by a kiss from my Princess Charming who came to take me to the next castle.

Chateau Chenanceaux

Chenanceaux's gardens

Chateau Chenanceaux has a moat!

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!"
"Sorry, it's too tangled from the motorcycle ride..."

Sleeping Beauty

Next stop is Villandry, 50 kms west back past Tours. Had a couple of encounters with French radar cops, thanks for the heads up to oncoming motorists who flashed us to warn of the speed trap! Apparently you don't want to be caught speeding in France, I think they speet in your general direction or something. Apparently I've been banished from the Castle Tour for incesseant slumbering, so for the next castle, Neda did the tour alone while I walked around the very pretty, but small village. We met up again for dinner and compared stories, but by this time it was around 7PM and we had a 4 hour ride south to Bordeaux.

Passed through some very quaint villages on the way to Villandry

Village of Villandry, lots of bicyclists around France!

Chateau Villandry is known for it's beautiful gardens!

Chateau Villandry's gardens, beautiful!

It was quite the adventure riding doing 130 legally on the Autoroute in the dark. We shared the highway with truckers and learned the French way of signalling lane changes - you keep your left blinker on while in the left lane. This accomplishes several things: 1) lets the person you're passing know you're in the lane beside him and not behind him 2) if there's someone in front of you, it reminds them to MOVE OVER! and 3) lets everyone know that you're a good citizen and that you're only in the passing lane temporarily and will get back in the right lane as soon as possible. I love the European etiquette of driving! If only the 401 were like that!

Arrived in Bordeaux with no hotel booked. We quickly found out that almost all hotels in the area close the front desk at 9PM, so if you arrive without a reservation, you're practically SOL. Around midnight, we stumbled onto The Night Hotel, with it's automated check-in system and access codes that befuddled us for quite some time. But for €31, you can't really complain. Actually, we thought that, until we saw the communal showers.

The Night Hôtel! That's the way it should have been spelt, with an exclamation at the end.
This was taken the morning after, so yes, there's a bit of time travel with the blog...

Communal showers in The Night Hôtel!

I was up till around 2 in the morning getting everything prepared for the next day. All the batteries on our electronics ran out at the same time, and we only had one electrical socket in our room (€31, can I start complaining now?). So I had to sit there and recharge both our cameras, both our iPods and my laptop to get some kind of minimal charge to last us the next day. And plan out where we're going tomorrow as well! I have no idea where we're going to be from one day to the next...

We're truly wanderers at this point because the plan changes every day as we re-evaluate what we want to see and what we can do in the timeframe we have...

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