Today we took a mini-bus tour of a few chateaus along the Loire. Why mini-bus? Because the only car rental place in Amboise is much farther on the skirts than I wanted to walk to in a steady drizzle! Bu tour tour guide was very nice and pretty funny. He lives in Amboise, so we got to ride with him to Tours to pick up the rest of the group and ask him any questions we wanted to.
The first two picture are of Villandry, a non-royal chateau with very extensive, complicated gardens. We didn't even go inside the home. I have a little video of Mike inside the maze, but I don't know if I want to post it to youtube so that I can embed it here. Maybe someday.
The next chateau was Azay de Rideau, designed by women - man off at war, leave me the checkbook so that I can build us a home. They actually diverted a river to act as the moat.
Here is our lunch stop back at Tours. Mike was trying to get free Internet from McDonalds. We ate a hurried lunch - not at McD's - and as we were getting ready to go back to the van, we spotted a English imports clothing store and ended up buying cool things for Tyler, Mike and Krista. Krist really scored, because her birthday was two days after we arrived home, so every one of her presents came from France.
Next stop - Chenonceaux - The biggest tour attraction of them all. They've done a great job of making it accessible to lots of vehicles, plus make every room interesting to look at. The hallway with all of the black and white tiles is actually just a bridge. The mistress of the king got tired of being rowed across the river, so she had this built instead. During WWII, one side of the river was in occupied territory while the other side was in free territory, so someone could literally cross the bridge to freedom. Not that easily of course, but still kind of interesting.
Mike mugged for me in the kitchen of the chateau.
The last visit was to CLose Luc, where Leonardo lived the last three years of his life. No, this is not his house, but Mike did find this fixer-upper the grounds. Interesting side note - while I was in teh WC, I noticed that the toilet paper dispenser was made by Rossignol. Not just ski makers, I guess.
We did not join the group for another tour of Amboise's chateau, instead we wandered around town. Dinner was leisurely crepes at a hip downtown bar/diner, where we could watch the world go by from its neon glow.
Mike also took this beautiful picture of the bridge at night.
In the morning we had to bid farewell to Amboise, but not after Mike got to eat the rest of our host's pear/apple compote!! We had to hang out until all of the other guests left the tabe - no room for us - but it was worth the wait. Yveline put on a great continental breakfast!
I had a hard time getting them to model their head socks for me!
But they looked super cool in their helmets and racing suits.
One of Krista's friends was freaked out by the practice laps, so she didn't run the final long race. Krista was the most cautious of the racers left in the game. One K's friends, Isaac, managed to do a great job of blocking Mike from passing him for quite awhile. It was much fun to watch.
Mike and Tyler raced too. They, of course, managed to lap everybody - more than once in most cases. Mike was the overall winner of the races. I was in charge of keeping the party going and taking pictures, so I didn't get to feel the speed. Some other time!
