Hotel Rabelais Tours

... cliff a few times we finally found the campsite.(Damn you GPS) .We are trying to stay away from night driving but when the drive is 5 hours long and its dark by 5pm it gets difficult.

I also remember that France has A LOT of farm land. That’s all we drove through. It’s crazy. Anyway, after a quick stop here it was off to Bordeaux for the real fun to begin!

... that the property holds, but it's what gets put in that comes out. And I'm sure that if you know what to look for you can taste hints of that grace and character in the wine that is made there.

So it's with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to all my friends in France, however briefly we met. There's no way that the times that I've had wont shape the rest of my experiences in my travels, and for that I'm grateful.

... that straddles the River Cher and is surrounded by gardens which even though its late October are still stunning. Inside over 3 floors we take in the places beauty - all of the rooms werer specatuarly painted withj deep blues, green and gold finishes, fine tapestries hang down the ceilings, large oil paintings litter the walls, period furniture gives us an insight into the life of its inhabitants over the years. This chateau wowed us!

... another lot of her famous hamburgers - fine grade meat patties on a french bagette loaded with stinky camembret (yum), tomato, spanish onion and lettuce and of course washed down with a glass or two of Rose - good work! After dinner we went out exploring. A lovely little town of around 10,000 with its chateau on the hill its main attraction. We had read it was best from the outside and so we obliged.
Amboise, Centre, France darrenhough74

... levels. Although, I have to say, it wasn't exactly what I had expected, there were several more explosions than I had pictured (between food grade hoses, tractor tires, and tractor engines it was quite a few mind you), and I never really pictured myself drinking Calvados at 7 a.m. with a team of transient Bulgarian grape harvesters. But after having survived through the process, it ...

I took a day trip into Tours, which is the biggest city around here. It's a pretty amazing places, I still have a lot of exploring to do here yet, but I wanted to post some pictures of my first trip that I took into Tour alone.

Enjoy

... rebuilt several times over the years. The nearest addition was like 300 years old. It did have some awesome gardens all along the side and back of the place. Comeplete with a not-so-hard maze which was completed in a record time of 6 seconds by me.

On my train back to Paris I managed to see an ever bigger Chateau in the distance. So it wasn't a total lose on my idea for vineyards and Chateaus.

... and lived there herself. She created a gallery on the bridge that had been built. The chateau is beautiful and is built almost entirely on the water. We walked through a garden maze, the gardens of both Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici, and the chateau itself. We went through various bedrooms and halls within the house that were all elaborately decorated. The ...

... in good steed for a big day on Saturday. Helios has offered to drive me around to some of the Chateau's on Saturday whilst Coralie is at her exhibition, that is amazingly genrous of him and we plan where we want to go. When we get back to the appartment we go to book my concert tickets to the Bourges Festival only to find EVERYTHING is booked out, the day before there were plenty of tickets left. That coupled ...

... guy behind the counter then leads us through this dark hallway, up these shady looking steps, and down another hallway. Man, I was pretty scared... If Sandra wasn't there with me, I would have bolted long ago. Anyway, things turned out okay. The pub guy was running internet out of his own home, which is cool. He spoke English with us too. Although I'm relaxed right now, this morning was like an enactment of the amazing race ...