Day 8: Saturday, April 28th
Travelling between Paris and Amboise
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| We said "goodbye" to the HoBeau where we stayed during the Paris leg of the trip, and where my parents would return later to see the sights for a few more days in Paris. Then, we rented a car and drove a couple hours southwest to Amboise in the Loire Valley... an area known for its castles. |
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| In Amboise, Mom had found us an AirBnB-type apartment right next to Château Royal d'Amboise... this is the view from our window! |
Day 9: Sunday, April 30th
Amboise - Market and Castle
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| Amboise hosts the region's weekly outdoor market on Sunday mornings. We strolled down the Loire River to find hundreds of pop-up tents with vendors selling plants, clothing, shoes, mattresses, jewelry, leather products, hats, coffee, and a wide variety of food, both raw and prepared. |
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| Without Nico there to help us, I became the French "expert". I stretched my brain to navigate us through purchasing fruits and veggies, cheese, coffee, and fresh pasta for dinner. |
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| In the afternoon, we toured the neighboring castle, Château Royal d'Amboise. Here are the groomed gardens and elegant mansion on top of the high fortification. The royal hub was "put on the map" when Charles VIII made it his home base at the end of the 15th century. |
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| Charles VIII married Anne de Bretagne, thus usurping Bretagne under France's control. The flags in this photo alternate: France's emblem in yellow & blue and Bretagne's emblem in black & white, harkening back to the end of the 15th century when Charles and Anne lived there. It was fun for me to feel like I was following a bit of Anne's history since I feel some connection to Bretagne now, and also nice to see Anne's roots acknowledged after having been forced to become queen at the age of 14. Our apartment is in this picture, on the corner closest to us of the second block back. |
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| Here is the small, yet very beautifully detailed chapel, perched on the edge of the castle wall. Every castle had a chapel; royal culture was highly influenced by catholocism. |
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| Two sides of the fortified wall boast large, round turrets, Inside each, horses used to pull carriages round and round a wide road that inclines slowly and steadily up to the courtyard at the top of the fortifications. |
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| Three generations of happy people visiting a castle! |
Château de Chenonceau and Château du Clos Lucé
Château de Chenonceau
Built in the early 1500's, Chenonceau had its fair share of drama, between kings, queens, and mistresses, for 400 years before playing an active role in the world wars of the 20th century. A military hospital at Chenonceau served 2,200+ soldiers during WWI, and in WWII, the Cher River over which the castle arches, was the border marking the edge of Nazi-occupied France. During that time, Chenonceau played a role in the underground-railroad-style escape route for Jews and others fleeing Nazi-occupied regions.
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| On Monday morning, a 20 minute car ride took us to the entrance of Château de Chenonceau - the valley's first "pleasure castle", rather than fortified castle. |
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| Like Versailles, every inch of this castle was ornately decorated. For example, this is a ceiling. Most ceiling tiles had the initials of the original builders: TB and KB for Thomas Bohier and Katherine Briconnet, or the royal H and C for King Henry II and his wife Catherine de Médicis, who were very influencial on the castle's later design. |
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| Just an average fireplace at Chenonceau. High up on the flue are the engraved coat of arms of Francois I (left) and his wife Claude de France (right). Claude is one of only two children of Anne de Bretagne that survived into adulthood. |
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| Yanni wonders where the party is. This is the first floor of the Grand Gallery - the part of the castle that crosses the river. At first built as a bridge to more easily get from the castle to the hunting grounds, Catherine de Médici eventually had three stories built on the foundation of the bridge to use as ballrooms and banquet halls... and eventually a military hospital in WWI. |
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| I was particularly impressed with the pre-fossil-fuel kitchen. It's the perfect model for a community kitchen (haha) because it's built for a castle's-worth of fancy people, so it was huge. There was a butchery and a bread oven and a whole room for the pantry. Pictured here is a wood cook stove four times the size of my own, and behind it is a hearth with a spit, possibly large enough to roast an entire boar from the nearby hunting ground. |
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| Rain threatened in the afternoon, but we took our chances at Château du Clos Lucé, a "guest castle" for Château Royal d'Amboise, with just a short walk separating them. |
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| The chapel of Le Clos Lucé was my favorite space. I eventually gave up trying to get a decent photograph of the tiny room because it seemed to be constantly filled with a tour group speaking one language or another, but the ceiling pictured here was never crowded. :) I was touched with sentimentality here for Anne de Bretagne. While she lived at Château Royal d'Amboise, she lost a number of children in infancy, in fact, in her lifetime she had 16 pregnancies; ten were miscarriages or stillborn, two died the day they were born, and two died as toddlers. She came to this chapel - away from the hustle and bustle of her own castle - to mourn and pray. It struck me that I wasn't reading about something an ocean away or standing in a life-size replica, but in the actual space where she wept for her children more than 500 years ago. |
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| In 1516, Francois I invited the intellectual company of Leonardo da Vinci to join his court, held at Château Royal d'Amboise. Leonardo accepted and spent the last three years of his life living in Le Clos Lucé. Apparently the 22-year- old Francois and the 65-year-old Leonardo were good buddies by the end, as several paintings of Leonardo's death have Francois mourning at his bedside. |
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| In the large park outside Le Clos Lucé, functioning models of many of Leonardo's inventions are scattered about. Yanni got a kick out of spinning the paddlewheel, begging "one more time" a hundred times... |
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| ...and Moisés insisted that we be sure to see every single model and enjoyed watching the mechanics of each one. |
Day 11: Tuesday, May 2nd
Returning home
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| Car fun on the way back to Paris, where the boys and I would catch a train to Quimper. My parents planned to see the sights in Paris for a few more days before returning to the US. |
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| These sweet people are still happy at the tail end of our long adventure! |
Love it, as always!
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