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Published: September 3rd 2012
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Thursday, 30/08/12 Loire/Crouzilles
Lynette figured out a different way of adding to my blog so that the last entry appears first, so it will take some getting used to finding my way around.
Anyway, we were too lazy to do something today so we did the cleaning, washing and writing most of the day.
We did go in to Chinon to join a guided tour of the castle but it turned out quite weird as the group pretty much sat down and litened to a history lesson from the guide. She went through all those who had lived in the castle and who killed who and who were the cousin or brother of whom and how the castle had played its role in the history of Europe.
After almost an hour she took us to one of the towers and went on for quite some time about the design of the arrow slits and then down to the bottom of another tower tower to see "the secret passage way" which was behind a locked gate in almost total darkness.
Suddenly our guide was gone and we were left to wander around the rest of the castle
alone with a brochure. The rooms were totally void of any artefacts but had screens set up that showed a movie type dramatisation of some parts of the history that she had told us about. Different!
From up the top of the bell tower we had a great view of the town and surroundings so in the end it was OK and possibly worth the entrance.
When the castle closed we stayed in town and had our first pizza for 2 months.
Friday 31/08/12 Loire, Crouzilles
On our last day in Crouzilles we drove via Crissay to Panzoult where we found the wine makers centre. A sort of common cellar door where all the local wines could be tested. Well, almost all I suppose. It was a nice way of doing it and we did never feel that we had to buy something as we were not exactly talking to the owner. The wines were presented by a very nice young guy who spoke decent English and in the end we bought two bottles of red. Not because we had to but because they were the best reds we have tasted so far.
We travelled up the hills for a while to see Sybils Cave which was a sort of house in the rock where apparently the philosopher Rabelais housed his favourite prophesiesse or whatever it is called. It was all closed and deserted so we could only peek through the cracks in the doors...
We went back to Crissay and got a beatiful picking platter for lunch in a small cafe/hotel called Coupes de Coeur. It's a town with 101 people so how you can run a restaurant there is hard to understand but while we were there they served at least 16 covers so it must be something about it. We loved it!
One of the restaurants we had been planning to come to all the time was Auberge du Val de Vienne in Sazilly only a few km from Crouzilles but we had also seen something about "Jazz and Bubbles" at a big winery a bit further away. We decided to do both, so we sopped in Sazilly at 7pm to book a table for 8pm as we thought this winery only was a few km further up the road. We got that wrong! By the time we found the winery (name not worthy of remembering) we were in Saumur and it was like, five to eight. But now we were here so we took the commuter bus up to the winery, high up on the hill, paid 5 euro each, drank two glasses of ordinary bubbles, took the bus back down again and turned back toward Sazilly.
Now we were really late so I rang the restaurant and said we were on our way and 30 minutes late we arrived, still wondering how we could have got it so wrong with the location of that winery...
All that was soon forgotten as we had yet another awesome meal at Val de Vienne.
Entree, Lyn: Snails in parsley butter
Ulf: Fois Gras with Haricots Vertes
Mains, Both: The best cooked Filet Mignons ever!
Desserts, Lyn: Mango in aspic
Ulf:
It was a fantastic way of finishing our stay in the region for this time. We will be back in about two weeks with K&O and I wouldn't mind going back to Val de Vienne. They deserve it!
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