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The Loire Valley
Entry 37 of 54 | show all | print this entry |
We left Paris early to maximize our two days in the Loire valley. The train ride wasn't too long thanks to the great high speed TGV trains they have in France. We arrived in a town called Blois, which in French is pronounced blowah. You should of seen us try and ask the info people at train station how to get to bloys. They gave us the weirdest looks and tried to send us some place that started with and R. It wasn't until we wrote down the name of the city and showed it to them, that they were able to point us in the right direction.
There is one hostel in the town of Blois and it is in the out skirts of town in a really ugly area. We had no idea what the rest of the town looked like because we settled in and went right back to the train station. Amboise was a 30min train ride south west and housed and impressive chateau and Leonardo Da Vinci's house, turned museum. This town was rather impressive while approaching it. The chateau dominated the skyline and the whole town was positioned along a vast river. We were going to see a different chateau the next day so we decided to go to Da Vinci's house. He lived there the last three years of his life, receiving 700 frank commission a month from the king of France. Apparently where he lived was the old chateau the king inhabited, but gifted it over to Leo once his new bigger place was built. The king like the company of Da Vinci so much that he had a secret passage way built that linked the two chateaus. The house was turned into a museum where the first two floors of the house were his bedroom and the various other rooms one needs when living in luxury. The basement level, however, was devoted to displaying models of some of his inventions. I learned a ton about Da Vinci I had never known before. He created a lot of war machines, the first armored tank, crazy functional bridges, found ways to power stuff with water, and was basically the father of the transmission system. I bought a book about all his machine inventions because I was so intrigued. After being totally amazed at what this guy came up with we wandered the extensive grounds. The property was mostly a wooded area that had many wandering paths. It was very peaceful. Through out the property there were full scale, and sometimes, operational models of his inventions. We spent the rest of the day there playing with the inventions and enjoying the serenity of the area. We finally left when we realized the place had closed 15 minutes earlier, thankfully they don't lock the doors when the place closes. We went back into the main part of town and a nice and long dinner. I enjoyed a new found dish called french onion soup. I know its not new, but its new to me and surprisingly good considering I don't really like soup. We made it back to Blois two hours after the buses stopped running. So with a combination of shear luck and good memory of the bus ride we took earlier, I navigated us back to the hostel in the weird mist that covered the land. I was pretty pleased with myself, considering we had only ridden the bus there once.
The next morning, we set out for the tourist information office in the city center. We needed to find out how to get to Chateau Chambord that day. We arrived at the tourist office at 12 to learn that it was closed between 12 and 2. So we walked around town until then. The town was very beautiful compared to where the hostel was. There was a large pedestrian shopping district and the town backed up to the river. Once 2 rolled around we went back up to the office, only to learn that the ONLY bus to Chambord left at 12:30. Gotta love the fact that the bus leaves while the office is closed. Slightly disappointed and pretty annoyed, we decided to see chateau blois instead. This had three main parts to it that were built by three different rulers. The oldest part of place was a medieval fortress they had turned into a meeting hall. This was one huge room that had a really cool echo and a ceiling covered in gold stars. The middle section of the place was still decorated like it would of been back in the day. This was similar to most palaces we've seen, except for the floors. There was no marble, carpet, or wood. It was all decorative tile which clashed horribly with the decorative wall paper and patterned furniture. I don't know how they tolerated so much going on in a room at once. The study was really cool because it was small and looked as though all the walls were solid wood panels, but in actuality there were 4 hidden cupboards and a hidden door. And they were pretty well hidden too! The second oldest part of the chateau was turned into an art museum and the newest part was still being used today by the government as a place to hold meetings. The view from the grounds was great. Since they commonly built these chateaus on hills you could see the whole town below you. This was an interesting royal summer home because the grounds were extremely small. I don't know why that is but all they consisted of was a big gravel drive way and a little side garden. We left the chateau and split up. Braden when to get his hair cut and I went to wander the town a little more. I crossed the river and scoped out places to have dinner. I found a place the looked like it served a good variety of food, so we ate there. They turned out to have amazing hamburgers which we devoured. The only problem was that they didn't have ketchup bottles, just packets. So we kept running out and having to steal some from the tables around us. There was a huge pile of empty packets I hid under my lettuce so the waiter didn't think we were crazy, which in actuality probably made us look more crazy than just leaving them there. Oh well. We went back to our hostel to do laundry and sleep. The next day was a long day of travel.
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