Valley of the Kings

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Well, its been a while since Provence. We were meant to be heading to Girona, Spain next but due to a train strike couldn't get there. So we had an extra night in Avignon and 1 night in Carcossone which was lovely with the old medieval city. From there we trained to Toulouse, picked up the car and drove 2 and a half hours north to the Dordogne.

On finding our B & B we were amazed how beautiful the grounds and house were "Les Charmes du Carlucet". An english and french couple with two children our age and a menagerie of animals, it was lovely to feel part of a family again. It had an amazing pool and we had the best weather they have had yet so that was great after looking around villages like Salignac and Sarlat which were beautiful. The difference in architecture was in the stone roofs and the colours of the cottages.

We canoed down the Dordogne past picturesque fort villages, La Roque Gageau, Beynac and Chateaunaud, built high on top of the cliff overlooking the Dorgogne. Highly recommend this way of seeing the villages, you get a much better view. Dordogne was much better than we expected, quiet and relaxing and very pretty rolling farmland. Highly recommend for a relaxing time.

Then we drove 3-4 hours to the Loire Valley staying at the Chateau des Ormeau, a beautiful chateau just out of Amboise. The chateau had been very run down after being abandonned for 30 years when bought by 3 partners who have restored it to its former beauty. Again we highly recommend this place to stay. The size of our bathroom is bigger than rooms we had in Avignon and Carcassone! It is beautifully furnished and we all dine on a huge elaborately decorated dining table for breakfast.

Today we explored Clos de Luce (former home of Leonardo da Vinci) and explored all the amazing inventions he thought of with full scale reproductions made by the designers at IBM. We were blown away by his creative intelligence back some 500 years ago. He had models of parachutes, army tanks, canons, draw bridges, bicycles, cars, water turbines, diving breathing apparatus etc. Amazing.

After that we headed to Chenonceau the largest chateau in the Loire and designed mainly by women over the centuries. A beautiful chateau with grandly designed gardens, absolutely amazing although lots of tour groups to find your way through.

Well thats it for now, sorry no photos as the hotel have no USB port for my camera so I have a lot to do next time.
Au revoir for now ...

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