Quality Hotel Harmonie Tours

Seeing the lights of La Meslerie fade into the distance last night was a bittersweet experience. It's a place that, for so many reasons, has become near and dear to my heart. It's not often in life that we give ourselves over to the unknown, but it's a validation of the beauty of existence that you could take a chance and be so rewarded. Granted, I only spent a month and a half in France. But when I look back on this period of my ...

... 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!<br>

Thursday 29 Oct<br>Drive to Amboise - Loire Valley<br>Feeling good we took on our longest drive yet to Amboise, nestled in the heart of the Loire Valley and on the banks of the Loire River. We used the time during the drive to type up our blog ready for upload once we hit our next McWifi. We arrived just after dark and found several other campervans parked near the river so we decided to join them. Kim ...

And so, the harvest is over. After 4 weeks of preparing, harvesting, cleaning and pressing we here at Clos de Meslerie have produced 6,050 litres of organic, biodynamic, unaltered, hand-picked, hand-pressed, grape juice. Which, given the proper time and care will blossom into a beautiful Vouvray Chenin-Blanc. It has been such a great time and a great learning experience on so many ...

Things have been running pretty smoothly here at Le Meslerie. Just finished a great push of harvesting and pressing more grapes, 950 liters yesterday (which is laughable by pnuematic press standards, but by hand it's pretty damn good). It's with a heavy heart that I realize that my time here in France is dwindling, but this also means that more adventure is to come, hopefully the good kind.<br><br> After ...

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.<br><br>Enjoy<br>

... to Chambord -- a gloriously magnificent and ostentatious chateau (palace? castle? ridiculosity?). The place is on a plot of land the size of Paris where kings of old went hunting. Among other things, it has a fantastically mathematical double helix spiral staircase inspired by the works of Vitruvius and Leonardo da Vinci, two of my favorite historical people. Cool! I was feeling pretty punk. The thing about those old buildings is that they are ...

... saying something will take "an hour and 10 minutes" or "a little under an hour," they say a "big hour" or "small hour." 2) They are masters at parallel parking. I have not really seen many people maneuver in and out of the spaces, but when i see the cars parked on the street, there are literally 2 inches on either end of the car. I don't know how they get out, but the only way I ...

... had to get out of the way quickly! The chateau really was beautiful, we both thorouhly enjoyed it and it has earned a place on our list as one of the best things we have done so far. That evening with dinner we had a bottle of the local vouvray white wine which the region is well known for. It cost 4euros and was absolutly superb. Today we had an unintended lie in and missed breakfast. The rest of the day has been quiet, spent gettin ready ...

... common mistake as the owner immediately assured us that it was called "Guy's Paradise." This did little to alleviate our concern, but given the great price and location, we decided to risk it. That night we met up with Billy and Christine Poorten. Billy and Bill were roommates in college and had not seen one another since our wedding over four years ago, so it was a pleasant surprise when we discovered that we would be in Rome at the same time. We enjoyed a fantastic Italian ...