Advertisement
Kitty with a view of Amboise Castle
You can see the side of the castle in the window's reflection.Geo: 47.1661, 0.238081
We were out of the hotel at 8:30 this morning, and Virginie started things off by giving us Mentchikoffs. Chartres is famous for two treats: macarons and Mentchikoffs. We had macarons yesterday (and they were gooood!). Mentchikoffs were created during a craze for all things Russian and named after a Russian general. They consist of ground almonds in chocolate, which are then baked into a meringue. They are super tasty. Unfortunately, Virginie says that she's never seen them outside of Chartres, so I won't be able to bring a sample back for anyone. You'll just have to imagine how chocolaty and creamy they are. 😉
Somewhere along the road we passed a small farm. There was a small doghouse under what was probably the kitchen window. On top of the doghouse was a small goat, and on the windowsill were a cat and another small goat. I can't remember what was in the field, whether it was a horse or a sheep (Can you blame me? You don't see windowsill goats every day!), but all they needed was a musician from Bremen to come along and get something started.
Virginie gave a little talk about the average French person's life. The
Eglise St.-Florentin
The window on the left is Notre Dame de Chartres. most common male name in France is Jean, and the most common female name is Marie; Martin is the most common surname. So she spun a little story about Jean Martin. Jean does not meet his girlfriend in college like a lot of Americans might. College is for studying,
not for having fun! Jean meets Marie at a party given by mutual friends. They hit it off and at some point decide to marry. They might get married in a church -- the religious setting makes for such nice photos -- but they must get married beforehand at City Hall by the mayor or the mayor's representative. Marriage is not recognized by the State if there is only a religious ceremony. Jean and Marie will have a big party afterward, maybe at a chateau, and it will go all night (though the newlyweds will slip away at some point). In the morning, when the party finally ends, their friends will bring them a bowl of onion soup. Onion soup is simple food and often eaten in winter; it's a working class meal. (No Frenchman would eat onion soup in a restaurant. Restaurants only serve it for tourists.) So the bowl of onion soup for M. and Mme. Martin is a traditional symbol of the hardships of marriage.
We arrived in Amboise a little after 10:00. Most of the group went off to the Clos Lucé, where François I installed Leonardo da Vinci for the last years of his life, but I'd seen it when I was here in 2009. I elected to just wander around the town a bit. There are pretty much two main streets in town, one of which is mainly restaurants and the other of which is mainly shops. I had a look at "restaurant row" and then hit the shops. I bought a little card game with French tongue twisters and some postcards.
I saw a sign for a church down a ... I'm not sure what you'd call it; it was way too narrow to be an alley. Anyway, it was the church of St.-Florentin, a small and bare -- but functioning -- parish church. It had eight or ten stained glass windows, all dedicated to one "Our Lady" or another. I was particularly pleased to see Notre Dame de Chartres in one of the windows, and I definitely have a new appreciation for how
the windows were put together and painted!
I got some lunch at a bakery called L'Horloge (The Clock): a flammkuch and a Coca Lite. The carbonation felt good, and the flammkuch was tasty and filling. It's kind of like a pizza but made on millefeuille pastry, with cheese, bacon and onions. And after that I went into a chocolatier called Bigot (pronounced bee-goh) and bought a piece of caramel and a feuilletine, which is very difficult to pronounce but is worth the blank look from the clerk.
We met back at the Loire at 1:15, where Virginie surprised us with pastries from L'Horloge. I tried a raspberry tart and a tarte au citron with meringue. Both were very yummy, indeed!
Our next stop was the Chateau de Chenonceau, known as the Castle of the Ladies because throughout its history it has been linked closely with seven royal or aristocratic women, in particular Diane de Poitiers, Henri II's mistress, and Catherine de Medici, Henri II's wife. I'd been there in 2009 and it was quite quiet then. This time it was a zoo! There's a long ballroom with a black and white tiled floor. In 2009 I took a picture of it and I
Naptime for Duckies
(The name of my soon-to-be-written children's book.) think there are only two or three people in it. If I had tried to take a picture of it today, all you would see would be people.
I went outside to escape the crush and found a nice display in one of the outbuildings. During World War I, whichever noble lady owned the castle at the time decided to convert the long ballroom and many other rooms into a hospital for wounded troops. The outbuilding display had a reconstruction of what the ballroom looked like with beds lined up for the soldiers. Next door to that was a massively cheesy wax museum, and beyond that was another lovely area housing carriages and some cars. Outside of that was a pond with some geese and several really noisy ducks. I could sit and watch ducks all day. There's something strangely calming about them.
I walked into the vegetable garden, went around a tree at the corner of a planting bed, and ended up face to face with a kitten (more like face to lower shin, really). We both stopped dead and looked at each other. Then she ran the other way around the tree. So I creeped back around the tree
the other way and found her looking at me again. I made some "pss pss pss" noises and slowly lifted my camera. That made her bolt into some flowers. I found her again and made some more noises, but once I raised my camera she bolted again and that was the last I saw of her. I wonder if she had been frightened by a flash or something. To make up for the lack of feline companionship, the garden also had a large closed-off area for six donkeys. They were all far more interested in trying to reach acorns that had fallen outside the fence than in having anything to do with humans.
Our hotel for the next two nights is Hotel Diderot, where the tour stayed in 2009. I think I'm now in the room next door to the one I was in then. It's a small, old-fashioned room, but nicely kept. The floor is all tilty, and I do worry a bit about the wardrobe in the corner. I had a helluva time getting my room door open. Barb and Mickey are down the hall and noticed me having trouble, so Barb came over and managed to get it
Boubi joins us for the Name Game
Jack, Nancy, John, Virginie, Barb, Christine, Gerry (my buddy ... he does have a name!), Carrie and Lynel open. I feel like an idiot.
After playing the Name Game in the courtyard (Boubi joined us, and he's even more unpredictable than he was five years ago), we had a group dinner at Le Chapeau Rouge in the town. There were amuse-bouches on the table when we sat down, and we were given a vegetable terrine to start (I declined: it was mostly broccoli as it turned out). We had chosen our main course when we checked into the hotel in Chartres; I chose fish over duck. The fish was a mousseline, which I gather means "several types of fish all mushed together." It was on a sauce of saffron and mussels. The fish itself wasn't too bad, though a slightly strange texture, but the sauce was a tad disappointing because it was too fishy (all those mussels) and I couldn't taste any saffron. The presentation was beautiful though. Two waiters, the chef, and the owner marched out with dome-covered plates and on a signal simultaneously lifted the domes with a flourish. A very theatrical effect. Then came the cheese course (two kinds of goat cheese flavored with chives on top of curls of apple cream sauce) and dessert, which
was spectacular. It was a semi-frozen nougat topped with a mint leaf, a yellow cherry that the French call "Love in a Cage," and a very long string of hardened caramel. Mine was at least a foot and a half long. And all this was on a hot chocolate sauce with a flat piece of sugary crispness. We all agreed it was the best part of the meal. We didn't get out of there till 10:00. And when we got back, I couldn't get my damned door open again! Thank God Barb came along after a few minutes.
Off to more chateaux in the morning!
P.S. Happy birthday, Mom!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.26s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 12; qc: 46; dbt: 0.1055s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
John
non-member comment
That looks like a familiar Rick Steves' circle. I'm guessing you got everyone's name correct, oui? ;)