"I could definitely live here"

Last Sunday, we visited Chenonceau, the chateau that sits on the river Cher. It is situated on the line of what used to be occupied and unoccupied France. The side that you entered on was occupied France and out the back was unoccupied. In WWI it was used as a hospital, and in WWII they would sneak people through the chateau to unoccupied France. Apparently Germany had an infantry unit on standby to bomb the chateau at a moments notice if things started to get too crazy. 

The original chateau was built in the 16th century. Eventually the had to refortify the chateau, so most of it was rebuilt. However the Tour des Marques and the well were left in tact.

The chapel was rebuilt in 1954 after the original stained glass was destroyed in 1944 during Max Ingrand. The depiction on it date back to 1521.

 King Henri II had a favorite mistress Diane de Poitiers who lived at Chenonceau. This is her picture and her bedroom. The carving on the fireplace are H for Henri, D for Diane, and C for Catherine (Henri's actual wife). Talk about awkward.

 This is in the green office. Catherine's study is just through the door below this painting which is called "A l'Aristoloche".

 

This is the Galerie. Catherine de Medicis had it constructed. Its 60 meters long, 6 meters wide and has 18 windows. It was used as a party hall when it was first built, and used as an infirmary in WWI.

 Chambre des cinq Reines (bedroom of the 5 queens)

 Bedroom of Cesar de Vendome (one of the princes)

 Bedroom of Louise de Lorraine (aka the white queen). She moved to Chenonceau after her husband King Henri III was assassinated by Jacques Clement. For the rest of her life (14 years) she only wore white, a sign of royal mourning. With her when she moved were several nuns who ended up staying with her until her death. They refused to go back to the church because they loved Louise's profound devotion.

 The queen's gardens

 The west facade of the house

 Morgan the Tour Guide

 

This is the original fountain. The picture on the right is of the mistress' gardens.

 While we were sitting here and enjoying the sunshine, we met a group of people who were from Charleston. Again, small world

 If you ever go to Chenonceau, don't bother paying extra to go to the wax museum. It's really not that impressive and takes only a few minutes to go through.

After we returned from Chenonceau, we decided to go back to the wine festival since we didn't have to pay again to get in. We left about 7 to head back to our respective homes for dinner. But all day we kept saying if we could live in one of the chateaus, Chenonceau would be our pick. 

Clos-Luce

Bonjour,


So where I left off was at Amboise. About a five minute walk down the street from the chateau is the house where Leonardo Da Vinci lived for the last three years of his life. It was pretty cool walking through someplace where he lived and worked. Basically the king at the time liked Da Vinci so much that he invited him to live at Clos-Luce so that he could just chat and rest in peace. There is even an underground passage way from Clos-Luce to Amboise. Pretty cool? Jess really wanted to hop the rope closing it off and adventure through. Outside of the house there is a whole park with different things dedicated to Da Vinci's life and work. I have to admit, when we were walked around, some of us were starting to get a bit silly because it was hot and we'd been walking all day. So we probably didn't absorb as much about everything around us as we could have. We learned that ducks like lemon cake though! 

Zach is 6ft tall and he barely fit through the door. French people are small!

 His study

 In the basement there was a whole exhibit on his inventions are the different things that he worked on over the course of his life. There was also a whole thing outside on his use of light in his painting.

Here you could take a Da Vinci style drawing class.

After Clos-Luce, we caught the train back home. That weekend there was a wine festival in town. You paid 5 euros for a glass and then could try all the wine that you wanted. There were over 100  different tents. Around 9 it started raining so we decided that we had had enough and went to MAO, a thai restaurant close to the festival. Below are my and Morgan's dinners. Their noodles were to die for. After dinner we were walking home and ran into a concert going on. It was part of the festival and the guys playing were playing in time with the fireworks that were going off. They deffinitely were shooting fireworks of in front of town hall, in the middle of the street, in the center of town. That would never happen in the US!

Morgan, Lara and I

My dinner

Morgan's dinner