Back from La Loire
Trip Start
Jun 26, 2008
1
13
26
Trip End
Aug 11, 2008
Tours,
Centre,
France
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Friday I had regular class and my first phonetics class. In phonetics we sit in booths and repeat phrases after the professor. The repetitions are recorded onto a tape and then we listen to them to hear the errors. It is really fun and I hope it will help some with my pronunciation though I only get 10 hours of phonetics while I'm here. Later on in the day we had the Louvre tour. It was also very crowded but informative. We mostly hit the major things (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory). I am planning on going back next Friday night to get some more time with the exibits that I'm most interested in. I was supposed to go out to celebrate 4th of July with the guy who is staying in the room next to me in the appartment here but he was too tired. I ended up at a cafe across from the Pompidou ( Museum of Modern Art) watching all of the colorful characters walking through the Marais
Old candy making tools
. All in all not too bad though not quite patriotic. Saturday stared off early. I woke up at 6:30 to get to La Republique (where Mom, Tony, Robert and I stayed last time we were here!). Traffic out of Paris in the morning was terrible but that gave me a chance to catch up on my sleep and do some homework. The first stop that day was Chenonceau. Chenonceau is far and away the best palace/castle/chateau that I have been to. It is privately owned and very well maintained. Most of the original furniture is still there and in almost every room there were real flowers. In the kitchen they had potted spice plants all over so it smelled wonderful. Beyond the nice interior the gardens were also very welcoming. Chenonceau is the chateau that Diane de Poitiers lived in as the mistress to Henri II. Diane de Poitiers kept a very beautiful garden at Chenonceau right next to the Cher river. When Henri II died his wife, Catherine de Medici kicked Diane de Poitiers out of Chenonceau and created her own garden mirroring Diane de Poitiers. Surrounding the entire chateau are thick woods which are lovely for a hike if you have the time. Another bonus to this chateau was that it was not crowded!!! (Also as a side note... there was a Russian tour group there and I got to speak some Russian which of course made my day.)
The second stop on Saturday was a vinyard for a wine tasting
3 Wines we tasted
. We got a brief tour of the caves and an explaination about how the wine was made. After the tour we tasted three wines: one sparkling white, one dry white, and one dessert white. It was great to get to taste the wines after learning all about them.Our final stop for Saturday (and one of the most fun) was a candy shop. The name of the candy shop is Poirault and it is one of the oldest candy shops in the country. We had a fairly detailed explanation on how the various candies are made and a demonstration as well. My favortie that we saw was the hard candies which are made by first taking a large box and filling it with corn starch. Then a mold is pressed into the corn starch to create a grid of little holes. After that the boiling hot candy-sugar mixture is poured into each hole. The candies are let to dry for 2-3 hours and then sifted out of the corn starch. Finally they are hand polished to remove the corn starch and make them extra shiny. They had the most unique taste. The flavor used was a mulberry flower and they had the consistency of a cough drop but were much sweeter and did not taste medicinal at all. The candy maker demonstrated a few other specialties and we got to taste everything. All of the tools he used were over 200 years old! The exact same ones that the original candy makers used. Quite fascinating (and quite expensive!).
That night a few of us walked around Tours where we were staying and had fun trying to order some Vietnamese food to go
Candy making demonstration
. I learned that the word for chopsticks in French is batons (much more useful than you might think!). Today was another long day of touring. We visited The Amboise chateau and the Chambord chateau. These were more of the variety that I am used to: somewhat crowded, not much inside. Amboise was interesting because Leonardo DaVinci's remains are buried in the chapel at the chateau. Also the surrounding town is very charming. We walked around the town and through the farmer's market where I bought some very tasty carrots for only 1.60 euro! My friends Tina, Nikki, Anne, and I all sat by the Loire and had lunch until it was time to move on to the next chateau. The last chateau, Chambord, was very pretty and intricate. We did not spend too long there because everyone was quite tired. The most interesting thing that I found at the chateau was the double helix staircase that had a strange sort of "light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel" middle. One thing about visiting chateaux that I noticed, the surrounding parks are always very nice. Most of the chateaux have places where you can rent row boats and thick woods to walk through. Spending time in the surrounding area seems like something the locals do more.
The bus ride home was long (another chance to catch up on sleep!). Tomorrow its back to school!
