The journey south

After our day in the Loire Valley, it was time to make the long journey south. The drive was about 250 miles or 400 km. We didn't want to spend the whole time just driving, so we chose a route that would take us through Poitiers and Bordeaux. In addition, we also planned a quick stop in old town Tour to see the cathedral there.

We got up and had our breakfast at McDonald's again. Nathan commented that he had to come France to really start eating at McDonald's as he never eats there in the US. We mixed things up a bit and went the the McCafe part of the restaurant (it's a seperate part in France) and order some pastries.

Look familiar?

With breakfast out of the way, we headed down to the south part of Tours to see the cathedral. A short side note: by this time we were getting pretty good at navigating in France. We could generally get where we were going with a minimum of wrong turns, and had developed a strategy on the round abouts that if there was any question, take a test trip around to reconnoiter the situation before turning.

We got down to the old part of Tours and parked, then had a bit of a walk around. We found a number of interesting sights, including the picturesque narrow streets of the old town, a 600 year old cathedral and perhaps the widest cedar tree I've ever seen. We couldn't get a photo of the tree as there was nowhere to get a photo that did it justice but take my word for it, this thing was enormous.

Here are a few photos of what we saw in old Tours:

The public garden in front of the

Musee de Beaux Arts

More of the gardens with the cathedral

in the background

A view of the cathedral

Yet another twisty street. Ho hum...

Me trying out a nifty vending machine

on the street!

We could not get a huge number of photos in the Tours cathedral because a service was going on. I guess that shouldn't be surprising since it was Sunday morning. Oh well, maybe next time!

After a little while in Tours, we got on the highway for Poitiers.  This was the shortest of the three legs of our journey, but still pretty long. Poitiers was actually a very nice city, with an old town up on top of a huge hill and millions of twisty streets and super old buildings. However, we didn't get out of the car there and didn't take an pictures. Sorry, Poitiers!

The next leg of the journey was from Poitiers to Bordeaux. This was a bit longer leg, but still not bad. We drove through the wine country of France, and were surrounded by huge vineyards in all directions. We had decided that we wanted to see the cathedral at Bordeaux as it was a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition, we had read in a guidebook that there was a huge bell tower right next to the cathedral that you could climb up in. We decided to do both.

We arrived in Bordeaux and followed the signs to the cathedral, the Cathedrale St-Andre. We found a parking space nearby (thanks for the free parking, Sunday!) and made our way to the cathedral. When we got there, we were blown away. It was huge (although not as huge as Chartres) and also super light and inviting inside. It was clear that the folks in Bordeaux had really put a lot of work into maintaining and restoring the building and it was without question the nicest cathedral we have seen so far.

Next, we went over to the bell tower (Tour Pey-Berland). Apparently, the bells were put in a seperate tower in order to keep the vibrations from the bells from damaging the cathedral. It was maybe 100 yards away from the cathedral, but apparently that was enough. It is interesting that in 1440 when the tower was begun, they already knew that the sound waves from the bell could damage the masonry of a building.

Anyway, you get to the top of the tower by climbing 232 steps in a super tiny spiral staircase. It was really tight in there (they only allow 19 people in at once!), but with a little squeezing by people coming down, we made up to the top and it was certainly worth it. You could see all of Bordeaux and look down on the cathedral nearby. It was very cool, and we took a ton of photos.

Here are several photos from our time in Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Cathedral from the

top of the bell tower

Another view of from the bell tower

Nathan posing with our favorite gargoyle

Me and my new friend!

A view from the bottom of the bell tower

After Bordeaux, it was time to get the rest of the way to Toulouse. We had a bit of trouble finding the highway after we left the center of the city. We kept seeing signs that showed a ring and said "Rocade", and since the map showed a highway that went all the way around the city, I guessed that "Rocade" must mean "Ring" or something, and we made our way toward the Rocade. Sure enough, whether my guess was right, once we got on the Rocade, we found a sign pointing us toward Toulouse. Hooray!
The rest of the journey was rather uneventful, so I'll just end with a few random notes:

• France's farm land just seems nicer than the farm land in the US. I've been all over the midwest in the US and seen a lot of farms, but none of them looked anywhere as nice as the ones we have been seeing in France
• The autoroutes in France are awesome, although the are a bit expensive. The speed limit is 130 km/h which is 81 mph, and they have really nice service station/restaurants all along the route. Total is my favorite!
• You see a lot of nuclear power stations in France.
• The Opel Corsa could use a 6th gear. When you are cruising at 130 km/h, the little engine in the Corse is really working hard!
• Gasoline is freaking expensive.

After arriving in Toulouse, we followed our directions as best we could to the hotel (the B&B Hotel Basso Cambo). We eventually arrived (we are good at long range navigation, but getting around cities is a bit tougher) at the hotel about 8:30 at night, and there was litterally no one there. The way the hotel works is that you use a touch screen computer to get your room key code, and then use use a keypad on the door to get in. The whole hotel seems to be unstaffed at night. Here it is:

Woohoo! Home for a night!

And that was it for Day 3!

Limited posting for the next few days

I have no convenient access to the Internet here in Bagneres-de-Luchon (or as the locals call it, Luchon). I am currently sitting on the ground in front of the Office of Tourism to make this post.  I will be able to try to post some new tomorrow and the next day, but expect the substantial stuff to be posted 2 days from now.

• I will give you a taste of what we've been up to:
• We drove from Tours to Toulouse by way of Poitiers and Bordeaux
• We watched the start of the stage on Monday from Samatan
• We raced the Tour to Pau and caught the finish and the awards ceremony
• We drove to Luchon which entailed crossing over the Col d'Aspin and the Col du Peyresourde
• We rested a bit in Luchon
• We drove to Spain by way of the Col du Portillon

Anyway, it's been a pretty exciting past few days, and I will get the posts up as soon as possible.

Chateaux Hopping (Deuxième Partie)

After Amboise, we visited Clos Luce which is located in the same town. This is not so much a chateau as it is a large house with an attached park containing some additional buildings. It is famous not because it was home to nobility, but because it was the house given by the king to Leonardo Da Vinci when he came to live in Amboise.

The house at Clos Luce is nice, but nothing compared to Amboise or Langeais. However, what makes it interesting is that it is filled with Da Vinci's drawings and models of those drawings. (Side note: The models were made by IBM, and I'm about 99% certain I remember IBM announcing these when I worked there back in the 90s. In fact, I believe I saw one or two of these models at the Management Development Center in Armonk when I went there for training.)

Anyway, the models at Clos Luce were the real stars of the show, along with a bunch of full scale reproductions of Da Vinci's inventions in the park. Unfortunately, I did not get any photos of these as they were hard to really capture on film, especially because the rooms with the models were quite crowded.

Nathan and I toured the house and the took a walk in the garden, but truth be told we were not super impressed with Clos Luce. Sure, the models and whatnot were cool, but they were not actual historical items, and there was little at Clos Luce that you could not theoretically see somewhere else. However, Nathan and I were of course suitably impressed with what a great mind that Da Vinci had and how he was cooking up things in his notebook that would actually be invented 500 years later.

As we walked through the park, Nathan and I had a very interesting conversation about whether someone like Da Vinci could exist today, dreaming up inventions that people would actually build hundreds of years in the future. I think we both agreed that it would be possible to have another Da Vinci (and probably already have had some), but the idea of someone coming up with a brilliant idea, writing it down in a book and then doing nothing with it is far less likely today than it was in the 16th century.

Anyway, here are a couple photos from Clos Luce:

A view of Clos Luce from the garden

The Chateau Ambroise as seen from the garden

at Clos Luce

Nothing against Clos Luce, but it was the low light of our day of chateau hopping. Perhaps it was just that the other places we visited were so awesome. Who knows?

Anyway, after Clos Luce, we drove to Chenonceau which was by far the belle of the ball. This chateau is actually built over the River Cher and is truly a site to behold.

You approach the chateau down a long boulevard lined with trees:

Nathan's already getting excited!

On the way, you pass a garden maze on the left, so we detoured and had a little fun there:

Nathan searching desperately for a way out

of the maze

Me celebrating conquering the maze for the first time!

I'm kidding about Nathan being lost. The maze at Chenonceau is awesome, but it does give me the impression that the French nobility had a low tolerance for being humiliated by a bunch of shrubbery; the maze was about the easiest thing to get through I've ever seen. Still it was very cool, and probably both Nathan and my first garden maze.  If only I could have checked in on Foursquare!

After our maze adventure, we made our way to the chateau itself. In a word, this place is breathtaking. Don't take my word for it, here are some photos:

Chenonceau as seen from the lawn

A closer view of the front of the castle

A view from one of the gardens

In the last photo, you can see how long the castle is compared to how wide it is. This is because it is straddling the river, and boats can (and did) go back and forth underneath the castle. It is one of the most amazing thing that I've ever seen.

Chenonceau was known as "le château des dames" because it was primarily lived in and presided over by various wealthy and powerful women, including Diane Poitiers (mistress of Henry II), Catherine de' Medici (wife of Henry II!) and even Mary, Queen of Scots. Apparently these women had great taste because the inside of Chenonceau was just as gorgeous as the outside:

The first floor gallery over the river; it is filled with

statues and has amazing fireplaces at either end

The stained glass windows in the chapel

The mantle above one of the many fireplaces

Did someone say they needed a gold leaf fireplace? Check.

The ceiling on the third floor. The detail was amazing!

Chenonceau is not just about the building, however. The gardens were also gorgeous, both the formal gardens and the flower and vegetable gardens that are on site. I didn't get a lot of photos of the formal gardens (although you can see a bit of one in the photo above), but the flower and vegetable gardens were awesome, and I'm not a garden person:

Nathan posing in front of the haricots (or was it the

aubergines?)

The grounds are also immaculate:

Clearly someone takes keeping this place looking

good VERY seriously

I'm sure there are other castles that can rival Chenonceau, but it will stand at the top of my list as one of the most impressive places I've ever had the pleasure to visit.

After Chenonceau, we wrapped up our castle hopping adventure and headed back to Tours. We celebrated our day of taking in royal (and other) history by grabbing a take out pizza from the Tablapizza that was right next door to our hotel. And with food out of the way, we were off to bed.

Chateaux Hopping (Première Partie)

Our first full day in France was spent chateaux hopping in the Loire Valley. We asked for some guidance from the person at the front desk of the hotel, and looked some things up in our guidebooks and decided on 3 or 4 chateaux that were relatively close by to visit. It turns out that Tours was an excellent HQ for our adventures, and we saw some truly incredible sights this day.

We were up fairly early (around 8:00) and got on the road by 8:45. First stop: breakfast, and the front desk guy basically told us our only option in the area was McDonald's. With little choice, we headed over.

When we got there, we found a the nicest McDonald's we'd ever seen. We still could hardly order food there, and accidentally ordered almost the entirety of Nathan's meal twice, but other than that we got a good start for the day.

Here are some shots of Chez McDonald's:

Look at that place! It's a thing of beauty!

Nathan eating his first truly French meal

The first stop after breakfast was Chateau Langeais. This was in a bit to the west of Tours and was a chateau that was in a bit more rustic condition. We arrived in Langeais and found an unbelievably picturesque town square with the castle in the background:

Could this be any cuter?!

The town hall, flying the colors on Bastille Day

A look up the street at the chateau

The castle itself is a bit on the rustic side (as castles go), but was a castle to start with as had we seen it last we might have been a bit disappointed. Instead, this castle gave us a taste and each subsequent castle just got better and better.

Apparently, it was at this castle that the king of France (Charles VIII) married Anne, the duchess of Brittany and unified all of France. Whatever the history, the chateau was very well preserved and looked gorgeous from the outside. Here are a few other shots of the castle to show what I mean:

Langeais as seen from the castle yard inside the walls

The original fortress built around 1000 years ago that

has since crumbled

Finally, here's Nathan as he'd look if he was a French solder 500 years ago:

Pretty menacing, huh?

After exploring Langeais, we drove back east through Tours to a town called Amboise. On the way, we passed some of the most amazing villages that were right on the banks of the Loire river. In many of the villages, because their was not much room, the houses actually had been dug into the side of the very steep hill on the north side of the river. I don't have any pictures, but I'm sure you can find some. It was absolutely fascinating how (and maybe more important why) they had gone to the trouble.

Before we visited the chateaux in Ambroise, we walked through the old part of the town and found a sandwicherie where we had lunch. I'm not kidding either; the sign over door said "sandwhicherie"! Apparently, in French you can stick "-erie" onto anything to indicate a place where they sell and/or make that   thing. For instance, we saw a boulangerie (bakery), a patiserie (pastry shop), a saladerie (salad restaurant) and bagpiperie (bagpipe dealer). BTW, I made that last one up.

Here's a shot of the old town and our favorite sandwicherie in Ambroise:

A nice clock tower in old town Amboise

See the sign? I told you it was a sandwicherie!

The town of Amboise was significantly bigger than Langeais. This is probably because the aforementioned Charles and Anne made the Chateau Amboise their home after their wedding. This likely drew a lot more people to this town.

Where Langleais was beautiful if somewhat spartan, Amboise was just beautiful. It was huge, on top of a massive cliff overlooking the whole area, and filled with gardens and other comforts.

Here are a few photos of Amboise:

The view of the river Loire from the castle

Looking at the outside of the main building from the 

castle yard

Part of the chateau as viewed from the inside

One of the gargoyles standing watch

over Amboise

The chapel at Amboise where Leonardo Da Vinci

is buried

See? I told you!

You may be wondering why Leonardo Da Vinci was living in a town in France. Apparently, King Francois I loved and appreciated Da Vinci and brought him to Amboise when he Da Vinci was 64 years old. He lived in Amboise until he died.

They say you should keep them wanting more, but I'm not sure what the first they say when the second they never really wanted the first bit, let alone more. Either way I'm going to stop here and finish up later. Au revoir!

The drive from hell

We left Chartres around 2:30 in the afternoon and headed to Tours. Now a couple things you need to know that are relevant to this post: 1) we had been up for about 25 straight hours, and 2) I had to go to the restroom. (Note to those reading my other posts: don't think I have some kind of prostate issue going on; I actually never did use the restroom after my aborted attempt at the French rest stop.)

Chartres was actually close to Pairs: about 60km. Tours was actually about 130km from Chartres, and was over much smaller roads that had a lot more slowdowns and stops.  We had a long trip in front of us and I was feeling pretty run down as well as physically uncomfortable because nature was calling.

We headed down the road looking for somewhere I could grab a Red Bull and take a "natural break". For some reason, even though we passed about 20 small towns and villages, not one of them had a small shop that would do the trick (at least as far as I could tell). I was trying to avoid driving a significant distance from our main route, but at Chateaudun I decided that break that rule. We drove quite a way to the center of the town which was a big square surrounded by shops and city hall.

I still could not find a Red Bull, but Nathan and I decided to eat lunch here. We found a brasserie and decided to eat there. We were met at the door by one of the waitress, I asked to the menu by gesturing and saying "menu", but for some reason, even though a menu is actually called "menu" in France, she still couldn't tell what I wanted.

Fortunately her coworker could speak English and seated us.  We looked at the French menu, and unfortunately could not make out much. We recognized a cheese omelette (omelette fromage) and some kind of fries ("something" frites). We ordered those two items by pointing, and then waited for our food. We had survived our first food ordering process, and it was pretty successful.

Eventually, our food came and we discovered the word I did not understand was apparently "Hot Dog" as the plate of fries came with two giant hot dogs!  Nathan and I were happy that the unrecognized word was not "live eel"! We ate our food, paid and headed out to the road, pleased that we'd survived our first restaurant experience in France.

We kept driving to Tours, still looking for a Red Bull purveyor and finally found one about 30km from the destination. I got some Red Bull and off we went again.

After driving for what seemed like forever, we arrived in Tours, just in time to realize that we had no idea where our hotel was. I had a brilliant idea of asking at another hotel, and sure enough they were able to help me find the Balladins Confort Nord. Now I just had to follow their directions. After mostly good luck with a little bit of bad, we eventually found ourselves in the parking lot of the Balladins hotel.

We checked in and immediately went to bed. It was the end to a long, mostly fun day.

Chartres

Our first real tourist activity was to visit the town of Chartres, about an hour or so from Paris. Chartres is a very old town, and is the home to a famous cathedral. The cathedral of Chartres has its origins in the 4th century. The current building was completed around 1230!

We followed the signs to the cathedral (I'll probably have another post about navigating by sign in France) and drove around until we found a parking spot. We were struggling with the machine to pay for parking when a nice French woman walking by informed us that we did not have to pay around lunch time which is when we had arrived. Score!

We walked along a small river past some of the most picturesque houses I've seen. We finally came to a bridge and crossed over the river where we took a few pictures:

Nathan on the bridge to the old town in Chartres

A pond viewed from the bridge

Another view of the river

Once we crossed the bridge, we were into old Chartres proper.  I have no idea how old the buildings were, but I can't imagine that some of them weren't at least 300 years old. Here is one that I liked a lot:

A nifty house in Chartres

This building appeared to be someone's house. I know this because I took a peek into one of the windows and saw some guy watching television!

Here are a few other photos of the old town of Chartres: In the first one, they took a super awesome old building and made it into a laundromat. In the US, this building would have been on the National Register of Historic Buildings.

You've got to wash your clothes somewhere!

Apparently I like the Tudor style

After going up a big hill, we arrived at the cathedral itself.  It was ginormous and unbelievably impressive.

This is the SIDE entrance for

crying out loud!

This was a nice chapel in the church

Lots of saints and others holding up

the building!

One of the actual front doors; they are

moving in supplies for a renovation

A view from below

For some reason, the two spires on the cathedral are completely different. I didn't ask why, but it is quite interesting to see.

Anyway, I could have taken a million more photos in Chartres, but I was not quite fully into tourist mode yet. I can say that both Nathan and I were pretty psyched. We knew that Chartres was certainly a great stop, but we had many, many more quaint villages, historic sites, and architectural wonders to see during our trip to France.