On to Amboise

This morning we took the train down to Amboise, in the Loire River valley. The town is of about 13000 folk, but we arrived on Monday, so almost every store was closed. We briefl tried to see about renting a car to tour chateaus, but after walking in the persistent drizzle, we opted for the minibus tour instead for Tuesday.Amboise is just plain adorable. If youever get a chance, then you need to stay there. We stayed at a B&B called Le Grange Chambres. The garage style door opens right on to the street and eery time we opened it, a car or ten were zooming by.

Amboise has a castle, or chateau, named after the town. I believe it was for Henry 1, mostly inthe possession of Catherine de'Medici, but she hardly ever came to town. It was, however, used as a lovely prison for a Arabian sheik of some sort with a large entourage.
The picture above is no the chateau. That is just the chapel, where some of daVinci's bones are buried (big controversy with Florence Italy over that), because he lived in Amboise the last 3 years of his life.
Here is the actual chateau with its extensive gardens. There is not much furniture in the place, but there are lots of great staircases and hundreds of bizarre ornamental carvings and gargoyles.

Mike was surprised to find an actual fire going in one of the fireplaces, so he needed a picture.

The amount of time spet carving these ornate and fairly peculiar figures is just too weird. ou can tell which chateaus were designed and overseen by women and which by men because of the nature of these types of carvings.

For dinner we found an Italian eatery open for business. Everthing had some prety unique French twists. Of course ordering was always an adventure, because we weren't always sure that we were translating the ingredients correctly. This bruschetta had chicken with pineapple and a sprinkling of yellow curry powder. We also had a very ig salad and a pizza. We took lots home to tote for lunch tomorrow.