At 7:15 we boarded the bus - and thankfully, since this was a different company from last week, the bus was different. There was leg room and the seats were more upright. But there was no bathroom on board and a 3-hour non-stop drive to the first castle. A bit of a challenge there.
Today's tour guide was Lisa. We kinda noticed that her accent was more Italian than French - turns out one parent is Italian and the other is Argentine. She's fluent in Spanish, Italian, French, English and Russian. Quite a collection.
This tour was run pretty much like the last one - Lisa's main function was to tell us the logistics of each site, give us our tickets and tell us when to come back to the bus. OTOH, each castle provided good self-guiding information.
This is Chenonceau (SHEH-non-sew) castle from the 16th century:
Assorted Royal Ladies lived here starting in 1547. I like the turrets. The gardens were nice, too:
It took us about an hour to go through; the inevitable staircases predictably slowed us down a bit.
In a vain attempt to minimize the amount of stairs I climbed today, Andy went down to the kitchens and took photos. The kitchens were huge:
We were a couple of minutes late back to the bus, but there was one couple who were a full 15 minutes late. Lisa was not happy that our schedule was now a bit off.
We had 90 minutes at the next castle, Chateau Cheverny (SHEH-ver-nee). This time included grabbing a sandwich (goat cheese, tomatoes and red onions on french bread) and eating it while watching the huge driving lawn mowers do their thing.
A relatively "small" chateau. This is the front facade, which the brochure says is a perfect example of Louis XIII design. The property has a kennel of hunting dogs and we could hear them on the way back to the bus.
The last and by far the most spectacular castle was Chateau Chambord (SHAHM-bor). It's so huge, I couldn't really fit it into one photo, nor did we have the time to walk far enough out to be able to do so:
Now THIS is a castle. There was a video abou the design and history of this castle - as French kings came and went, which parts of the castle were built out/up and/or enhanced. The symetrical design has a decidedly Leonardo da Vinci feel about it.
All the rooms are huge. Everything hinges around the center double-helix staircase:
This staircase goes all the way up to the top of the building. The most interesting rooms were on the 1st and 2nd floors. The 3rd floor was an art gallery (eh), and the 4th floor was mostly views from the terrace.
And here's the central staircase from the outside on the 4th floor terrace:
Mind you, this was about 200 steps up. And what goes up, must come down. In my case: very, very slowly. 200 spiral stone steps alllll the way down.
We arrived back at our starting point at about 7:00. We had dinner at a cafe right around the corner. We tried to find a pastry shop for dessert, but had no luck. Rather, I just ran out of steam after a few blocks of looking.
Tomorrow: the Rodin Museum. Depending on how long this takes, we may or may not walk a block over to Invalides, the former church-now army museum where Napoleon's tomb is located.
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