Chateau hopping in the Loire

Pat's work sent him to the Loire Valley in France for 2 weeks to visit one of their sites, and *forced* him to stay over the weekend. With a hotel room and rental car. Poor guy. So I managed to make the best of the situation with VERY cheap flights and had a nice little weekend in France :)



Tours City Hall

Pat picked me up at the airport in Tours early Friday evening, and we headed into the "downtown". It's a pretty little city, with amazing architecture... I loved the insanely old wooden beam & brick buildings.



Somewhat terrible phone pic - but so so charming.

We met up with one of Pat's colleagues for a drink before dinner. Even though we only ordered a few drinks they gave us a little meat and bread plate to share. France knows where it's at.



Bag o' baguettes casually hanging out beside our table at the bar!

After a disappointing meal we headed back to the small town of Loches where Pat was staying for the 2 weeks. It was so nice having a car again and not being totally dependent on public transit schedules! Even the tiny little rental felt like such a luxury. Pat's skills driving manual were also very impressive. Needless to say he did ALL of the driving over the weekend :)

On Saturday, despite the absolutely MISERABLE weather, we set out to check out as many of the "chateaux" as we could before the sun set. Our first stop was "Chenonceau." It was so nice to see the rooms dressed up for Christmas. It made exploring feel even more special getting to see the castle in its "festive" gear.



Chenonceau

The rear addition on the castle had a really interesting gallery explaining the history of the castle. I found it cool because I have a guilty addiction to the TV show "Reign" and Diane (one of King Henry's mistresses) and Catherine de Medici (former Queen of France) are both historically tied to this castle *in real life*!! So it was kind of neat getting an insider view into the true events behind the show.

The inside of the castle was amazing. I think my favourite part was the first floor gallery in the "covered bridge" at the back. It was so classically beautiful with white stone walls, black & white floors and very simple chandeliers. I may have commented once or twice that it would be a stunning location for a wedding reception ;)



The first floor gallery

We made our way through the castle interior then spent some time wandering around the grounds. I may or may not have been a bit whiny due to the frigid temperatures & my failure to pack SOCKS for the weekend. Whoops.



My new best friend. Half donkey half grizzly bear.

By this point in the day my body had officially started shutting down due to hypothermia (I don't even know if I can call myself Canadian anymore!!), so we headed out to find some lunch in nearby Amboise. Fun fact about France - restaurants are not open between 2 and 7:30 pm. ANYWHERE. We were thisclose to resorting to McDonald's but managed to find a bakery that made sandwiches just in time. Pat is so lucky I never get hangry ;)

After wolfing down our sandwiches, we headed up to castle #2 - creatively called "Chateau Amboise".

This castle is built up on a hill overlooking the town of Amboise. It had less to see inside than Chenonceau, but had beautiful views of the river and town.



How is the grass still so green?!

Probably the craziest thing we stumbled upon that weekend was finding Leonardo da Vinci's burial site in the castle's chapel!! I obviously hadn't put much research into this trip and was shocked to find his name inscribed on a tomb in the chapel. I easily could have walked by without even realizing it was his. Apparently I was too surprised to take any pictures.

After leaving the castle, we wandered around the little streets of Amboise trying to finish up our Christmas shopping and then headed back to Loches.

I had booked my return flight on Sunday out of Poitiers, about an hour south of Loches. We tried to do a little bit of exploring and slowly made our way towards Poitiers, but we did not have much success finding anywhere particularly interesting. We did pull off the highway to check out "Futuroscope", but at 42 euros each, with only an hour before I had to be at the airport, (and my aversion to amusement parks) we decided to give it a pass. If we end up back in Loches when it's a bit warmer I fully expect to be dragged back. It was a very surreal experience as it was definitely their off-season and with the grey weather & empty parking lots, it felt very desolate & almost abandoned. There are sooo many hotels surrounding the park though I imagine it must get super busy in the summer.

I made my way back to London and am now procrastinating packing to head back to Canada for Christmas. We will also be in Grenada over New Year's so we have a very busy couple of weeks ahead of us. I can't wait to see the sun again!!