Hotel Mascotte Les Sittelles Le Mans

... Chambord and I paid almost 50 Euro (AUD 100ish) for a salad, glass of wine and tea with lemon... Really, I was paying for the privilege of being able to use Pat's laptop with an uninterrupted view of Chambord!

We visited Chateau de Chenonceau (C16) in the afternoon and were confronted by thousands of tourists, even at 4.30 Luckily by 6pm the crowds were starting to diminish (the Chateau opens until 8pm in Summer), allowing us to better appreciate its ...

Thank God for the GPS and the Audi s4!! This place is really nice... our room is austrian themed. We arrived and checked the place out, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant...the menu was in French so we had a fun time translating everything....I have un petite phrase book that really helps!! We also went down the road to the cellars (cave in french), and had a wine tasting and bought some wine. Tommorrow we are going to see some Chateaux!!!

Distance covered: 38.6 miles

So we cycled a mission and met up with Olly. He was all like "but i tried to find you guys". Thats nice, but we never did find where that slug went from the ceiling. Anyway after hugs and kisses we cycled to a MASSIVE shop and bought MASSIVE food. We then cycled to some woods (full of broken glass and litter) and ...

... the night was looming. Fearing for his life due to the number of massive water filled ditches and a firm knowledge of Olly's issues when riding a bike we decided to get the police to search. They started looking.

Olly decides to give us a phone call at half 11, at night, 6 hours after we last saw him. He decided to cyle 30 more miles to Le Mans. nob head. Interested to know his logic we arranged to meet up the following day. Unfortunately, we had know ...

... visited my brother was on a mission to find castle with a hedge maze. As painful as this was the first castle hade a hedge maze but it was not good enough for him so every castle we went to we looked for a hedge maze which we finally found Chenonceaux Chateu. The castle stretches across the Loire River and has its own beach. The castle was huge and smelled of old people. As we were just about to leave Ben saw the sign that ...

... They had gun’s in the fourteen
hundreds. I liked it. I am not sure why but i don’t mind cramped underground spaces. In fact i quite like them.
Leonardo da Vinci’s house, was amazing. We saw all his scribbles in a notebook of his, we some his inventions in a framed model. But the garden was what was most amazing. In the garden they had life sized inventions ...

... Say la vi. Is that French? What does it mean? No clue. ah... google helps, got it now! We make our way to the castle entrance with the expectation to just look from the outside (we are traveling cheap as possible!) ... but are delighted to find it is GRATUIT (that means 'free' to all my non-French speaking friends out there ... sheesh, come on now, learn French already will you!) ... some remodel work being done, but no problem for us. The price is ...

... of door covered in ivy. This is their garden ... next to the river. Look at the photos. Be amazed. ... I'm the bold type, so I just jump right in and ask, "How much did you buy this place for?!" ... Get ready for this. ... 160,000 euros. Surely he had the figure wrong. "Maybe 1,600,000?", I clarify. ... Nope. 160k. He is sure of it. ... I'm in shock. This place is a paradise. Local markets, the river a block away, huge cathedral five blocks away, their seven year old boy ...

... to enjoy some wonderful gallettes. The kids split a cheese one, and Janice tells me to order ours ... (what a wife!) ... I pick one winner (with marques, a spicy spanish sausage), and one loser (the namesake of the place, with really ultra strong tasting anchovies). We are thrilled to find that once again, the service is remarkably pleasant. The waiter always has a big grin, he is happy to practice his English, and he gives some great recommendations (suggested we order ...

... blue water of the Mediterranean Sea along the Cote d'Azure Coastline.....we could go on and on...... Instead of rambling out pages of words, we've decided to send you some pics this time in an effort to better describe our fantastic journey so far. For many of the sights we've seen words and pics just don't do justice....but the pics will at least in time jog the memories and fill the journals and albums. To name a few (and certainly not all ...