Amboise
Today was Chateâu Day, meaning we saw two chateaus of the Amboise/Loire Valley
region. But that is not the correct way to write two chateaus in the French
language. More on that spelling issue... further down the road.
We
rented a car at the urging of Gloria, our host at La Vieux Manoir, our gloriously
beautiful bed and breakfast, recommended by Rick Steves, of course (pun here... Gloria-- gloriously). This bed and breakfast gets high grades and is recommended
to all—by us, John and Reed, the Americano travelers from Texas. It cost some
euros but well worth the indulgence. Here’s the link:
We left our B&B on foot and headed towards a
road named Charles DeGaulle. We were looking for DeSir, a Renault dealership.
Not confident of our directions we stopped for assistance at the Office of
Tourism. We departed again on a 2.5 mile jaunt, but with slightly more
confidence in our hiking plan.
Reed rented the car and paid about 69 euros for a
one day rental. We started hesitantly in the car with its manual transmission.
The erratic design of Amboise streets, with architecture inherited from the
Middle Ages, proved a challenge. Two-way streets suddenly became one lane roads
and occasionally we bumped up against a one-way street from the wrong
direction. I pulled out Google maps and the charge unfortunately started the
day at 50-60% charged, my biggest cellphone lapse of the entire trip. We would need
Google maps every step of the way on Chateau Day.
Another slight problem, we had not learned put the
gear shift in “Reverse” gear. This proved to be a tenacious problem, getting
more annoying as the day wore on—and only fully resolved at day’s end when we tried
to pull into La Vieux Manoir and got wedged in the entryway. Bob, husband of
Gloria, pointed out a little ring on the stick shift that had to be lifted to
move the car backwards. We had asked a blonde-haired guy in the Chenonceau
parking lot, our first chateau, to explain the reverse gear and he pulled hard
on the thing and made it work—but failed to add that little bit of instruction
concerning the ring to be lifted. Not a natural teacher the blonde-haired guy.
Chenonceau had an uplifting quality. Not sure if
this castle is used as the Walt Disney logo but it had the magic kingdom
quality—but these kingdom’s were authentic, not the Disney ersatz recreation.
The graceful castle even crosses the entire expanse of the Cher river! The
castle stands alone, an organic whole when viewed from a distance, like a
sculpture in stone. And exciting to see it is surrounded by a moat, a moat wide
enough to provide an effective defense against enemies.
Crowds throng the estate around Chenonceau and the
sprawling grounds can barely handle the tourist horde. Somehow Chenonceau
handles the crowds and offers a magnificent experience, aesthetic and
educational, a powerful history of kings, mistresses, Catherine de Medici
included, cause you got add some Italian drama, and then you add George Sand, a
female French novelist with a male nom de plume. George Sand had family
connection to the aristocratic family granted management rights for the castle.
A gallery, included on the portion of the castle that crossed the river Cher,
explained the history of Chenonceau in lucid terms.
I felt my
blood sugar waning and realized I had only eaten a croissant and cup of coffee
before we started on our lengthy walk to the car rental, followed by the drive
through the French countryside, delightful sunflower fields to behold, with
flowers bunched tightly for hundreds of yards, following the sun with their
faces, a very anthropomorphic ability the flowers have and you start to imagine
human faces in their yellow leaves, a Van Gogh painting come to life. In the
middle of admiring Chenonceau castle I suddenly felt thirst and exhaustion.
Reed finished his tour of the chateau. I waited out front and came across the
Bob and Jo, the New Hampshire couple from our bed and breakfast, along with
Bob’s brother, who became a French citizen, and sister-in-law as the foursome
exited the castle. My physiological needs got met when we found a few decent
French baguette sandwiches, almost always available to save the day in these
travel situations, and a large bottle of water.
Our day’s journey continued to Loches chateau, a
great recommendation from Gloria, and slightly off the trail of favorite
chateaus for tourists. The blonde-haired guy didn’t solve our problem of how to
put the Renault in reverse in the Chenonceau parking lot but we plunged down
the road like Don Quijote and Sancho Panza on our medieval quest. Loches had a
more military feel and commanded an amazing view of the valley below, clearly a
superior vantage point above any approaching enemies. Our enemy, the loss of
battery power on my Samsung phone, threatened our bourgeois comfort as I needed
the thing to navigate us around the highways, byways and traffic circles, one
of them it seemed every few miles, to our next destination. Meanwhile we don’t
want to stop any place that requires putting the car in reverse.
We saw Loches chateau above us as we pulled into
town without ascertaining the exact entrance to the amazing citadel. As a
result we traversed the entire backside of the massive walls of the castle.
Much of the walk was shaded. I obsessed about how we would find our way back
from Loches to Amboise but tried to recall a day before cellphones to calm
myself. I enjoyed the backside excursion around Loches almost as much as any
aspect of the day. We could feel the dimensions of the Loches because we
circled the whole thing. At times the walk had an unnerving element because it
felt like we were lost.
Reed’s term for those moments of extreme panic are
“white knuckle moments,” referring to when you are gripping a steering wheel in
terror. He may have been anticipating our drive home, very amateurish in our
European driving, and meant “white knuckle” in the literal sense. We had a few
of those on the drive home that evening but credit Bob with get us through the
portals of our bed and breakfast. But back to Loches…
Once inside the fortress we climbed several
staircases to a dungeon high atop the building. An ally of Joan of Arc was kept
there, his confinement in a stone-lined room with a view. They called it
medieval for a reason—and it wasn’t a synonym for comfortable living.
We felt grateful to Gloria and Bob for pushing us visit
these grand chateux. Oh, and chateux
is the French plural for chateau. I’ve been waiting all essay to add that
groovy spelling—and, of course, both chateau and chateaux have the exact same
pronunciation. Vive la France!
1 château + 1 château= 2 châteaux …
travel day—7/3/17
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