*Unfortunately our last hotel did not have internet, so I had to wait until we arrived in Paris today to update you all. This will be less comprehensive than I would have liked, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.*Today was light on the history and heavy on the beautiful photos. So I'm going to include more of those and less of the dialogue. For some reason all of a sudden it takes much less time for me to upload photos to Blogger, that's why I have included so many more of late.
This is Azay-le-Rideau, the fourth chateau we have seen so far. I think it was my favorite. I had never been there before and I was pleasantly surprised. It combines all of my favorite elements of other chateaux we have seen: pleasant scenery (lots of trees and a river nearby), a manageable size, and fewer tourists. Instead of having formal French gardens like Chenonceau, this one just has a "Romantic" British-style park (read lots of grass and trees).
Then in the afternoon we went to chateau #5: Villandry. I have already been there before, but it was interesting to see the flowers in the early fall rather than the late spring. Neither last time nor this time did I go inside the chateau, because the gardens are better worth the time. Last time I went it was June and the arbors were covered with grape vines, but no grapes. Of course, right now is the vendage (grape harvest to make wine) so the arbors along the gardens of Villandry were full of plump bunches of grapes. Since it was mid-to-late afternoon at this point, the sunlight was streaming in sideways through the wooden arbors and the gravel path underneath the arbor's arches was downright magical. I felt like a little kid, a princess, a Greek goddess. I just wanted to reach up and pick some.
And once I saw Jenn do exactly that, I followed suit. And my reward was that the fat grape burst right in my fingers, spraying juice in my hair. Undaunted, I grabbed another, but more carefully. I was astounded by the variety of colors: pale yellow to supermarket-grape-green to rosey pink to deep burgundy red to violet. And sometimes there were multiple colors in a single cluster of grapes. This probably doesn't seem earth-shattering for you, but I found it pretty neat. I've now added "an arbor with grape vines" to my list of future desires.
After Villandry we went to Close Luce, Leonardo da Vinci's home near the chateau of Amboise (we didn't go inside, so I can't really count this as chateau #6). I have also been to Leonardo's home before, but yet again I discovered things I had not seen before. This time we got to spend some time wandering in the garden, which has life-scale models of his inventions. We also discovered, to our extreme pleasure, a play-ground. Even better, it was not occupied. So we made good use of the hanging/swinging/human-tetherball thing. Clockwise from the back: me, Miles, Kara, Carolyn.
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