Tours Sud-Chambray Chambray-Les-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.

From Amboise we had a short drive to Chenonceau where we keen toursits along with one tour group we there early and had to wait 10 minutes until the chateau opened for day. Once through the gates it was a lovely walk through the forest where the leaves were all changing colour - amber, yellow, red - so pretty. As we approach the end of the forest the chateau appears before us and its like stepping into a fairy tale. The chateau sat on ...

... Now came the hard part, trying to decide which chateaus to visit as we knew we could not visit them all. In the end we bought a multi-chateau pass to Cheverny, Chombard and Blois and then had to buy Chenoceau separately.
Why choose these chateau's? Chenonceau for the fairy tale chateau, Cheverney for the extravengant interior and furnishings, Blois for the architecture and Chombard for its grandness.

... some drinks in Amboise which is currently my favorite destination that is close to the Meslerie. The Loire valley has so many gems though, it would take forever to uncover them all, so I will choose my battles, and hopefully win several of them before I leave.

So, I leave you with a few pictures from my day trip to Amboise/Chenonceau and a promise that there is more to come soon.

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.

After ...

... an hour to get back to the hotel, at which point we had a wine tasting with one of the owners of the hotel, Laurent. Chinon produces both red and white wine, though 81% of the production is red. We tried three whites: a sparkling, a dry and a sweet. I liked the sparkling and the dry, but the sweet was really, really sweet. There was some goat cheese to try with the dry one. And we also had two reds, along with rillettes (a sort of paté made from pork shoulder and leg) and ...

... to walk a short ways from the coach to the Hôtel Diderot (www.hoteldiderot.com). It's a lovely building, with a couple of out-buildings, and an orange and white cat who ignored us, then showed off his white tummy, and then came over to us specifically in order to shed on all of us who were wearing black trousers. His name is Boobie. Seriously.

My room (#8) is bigger than the one in Paris, but smaller than last night's room. I have a shower stall with ...

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

... Oh well, she won't get any of our money. One minute later, we hear Samuel say, "Oh my gosh! Look at this! There is a doggie on my chair!" ... and we turn to see a small stuffed animal on the chair. My first thought was that perhaps it belonged to the dessert restaurant that we were at. Maybe it was a clever way to get tourists to buy stuff, ya know? But I looked around and didn't see any souvenirs inside, ...so my next thought was that maybe the creepy old man ...