Blogs from Pays-de-la-Loire, France, Europe - page 33

We slept through breakfast and checked out about 11:30. After we explored our own chateau, it was time to find a cappuccino, a baguette and explore more chateaus. Our first stop of the day was Chateau Chenonceaux. This remarkable castle has a tangled history of love and betrayal. It was given to Diane de Poitiers, mistress to Henri II. Diane’s power over Henri’s heart infuriated his reigning queen, Catherine de Medici. However, after Henri died during a joisting tournament in 1559, Catherine had Diane thrown out of Chenonceau. , Inspired by her native Florence, Catherine added the two story gallery that spans the river. In honor of my father, I found the mechanics of the chateau to be the most interesting. It has a rotisserie that automatically rotates three different stakes, perhaps roasting up to 30 ... read more

Loire Valley Castles As I leave tomorrow for our Ireland/Scotland/England vacation, I wanted to update this with my pictures from this past weekend!! So we boarded the bus at 7:45am (you can imagine my excitement at 7:45am) - but in French time, it was more like 8:15am before we got moving. The weekend would be usually half an hour behind when we were to be doing things. Anyways, it would be a 4 hour drive to our first destination: Chenenceau. I spent most of the ride there chatting it up or listening to my music and staring out the window. We were also given a movie to watch - it kept me from sleeping. We got to Chenenceau around 12:30pm or so and toured around for 2 hours. I won't go into describing the Castle considering ... read more

Morning broke as it always does in France, bright clear and quiet. We were on our way home and work was beckoning next week. We work early and ate our breakfast in the local Campanile pondering on what we planned to do over the next few days. We were trying to make the most of what was left of our short break before returning to the toil and hinderence of work. There was so much to see and sometimes it is hard to make a decision. Much depends on taste and time. It is easy to fill a fortnight up with places to see and things to do and then to realise there is so much more left that you could have taken the time to see. . We knew we were going to drive up ... read more