176 Loire Valley

Day 42, 10-08

Today was another early morning – by 7am we were out the door. After a quick supermarket stop we got on the train from Avignon to Paris, where we needed to connect on to Tours in the Loire Valley. All was going smoothly until Paris, where we realised that the next train we were taking was from a different train station in Paris! Now super stressed and short for time we took the metro from Gare du Lyon to Montparnasse, but after all our suitcase running (pros by now) we were too late and missed it. HO no! The next best option was to bus back to another station Gare L’Austerilitz, which was lamely enough back very near to Gare du Lyon. Just managed to catch this one on time and after another long travel day arrived at Tours in the late afternoon. We spent the afternoon walking around. We went through some markets on a tree lined, pedestrian centred street not dissimilar to Las Ramblas in Barcelona. The pedestrian area however was heavily English influenced in parts, something I never would have expected. Lots of the buildings in this area are made with the brick and wood in the appearance of old English farm houses, and there are Irish pubs and bars everywhere. Weird but cool! Like all our travel days we were pretty worn out, so on our way home we stopped and did a supermarket shop for dinner again. This time a lot of salmon and a screening of I Love You Man, again.

Day 43, 11-08

Today we did a tour of four famous chateaus in the Loire Valley in a yellow VW van – awesome. We started off at Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau, a beautiful Renaissance castle acquired by the King’s secretary and notary in 1510. This was perhaps my favourite castle of the day – although massive it was relatively small and humble and almost looked like it was out of Disneyland. The chateau was surrounded by water at the back, and had a massive surrounding lawn which housed lots of sculptures which was pretty cool.

Next was Chateau Villandry (1536), the last of the great chateaux built in the Loire Valley during the Renaissance Period. It is perhaps more famous for its beautiful gardens. We only had just over an hour so we chose to just tour the gardens instead of garden and chateau. The estate is vast and never ending – the gardens are made up of lots of sub areas including the most beautiful Ornamental (Love) Gardens, the tranquil Water Garden and the hedgey Maze. Very luxurious and dreamy. We stopped back in Tours for a sad 15 minute lunch break, then we were off for a 1 and a half hour ride to Chateau Chambord.

Chambord was built by King Francis I in 1519 in the Renaissance Italian style. It had a ridiculously large appearance but has a giant internal courtyard. The double helix staircase was pretty fantastic – two intertwined stairs so you could view across to the other but never meet up with it. It was cool going up to the chateau terraces where there was both a spectacular view of the Gothic and Italian Renaissance roofs, and a magnificent panorama over the Chambord estate.

Our last stop of the day was at Chateau de Chenonceau, built on the River Cher in the sixteenth century. There were lots of elaboratey decorated rooms to get through, some more interesting than others – not to mention we were pretty chateaud out by this stage. The most stunning views of this castle was from walking out the back along the river/moat. The gardens were also pretty but none as impressive as the earlier Chateau Villandry.

We arrived back to Tours at 7pm, it was a long and photo happy day! The plan was to head straight to WOK UP – freaking hell yeah, a Chinese buffet we had spied by the train station yesterday, only tainted today by the drunks and homeless meandering outside… WOK UP most definitely lived up to its expectations though, aside from a drunk invader/cop call dinner intermission it was in fact rather fancy! There were lots of not so cheap items such as good salmon sashimi, roast duck, frogs legs (I think?), a WOK UP station where chef’s would cook your own selection of meat and veges, and lots of fresh fruit and ice cream for dessert. Good one, WOK UP. We rolled home, planned the next few Parisian days out and went to sleep full and exhausted.