Spring Trip 2013: Loire Valley (this time with some commentary on the cool stuff I saw)

As you may or may not have noticed, I posted some pictures from the Loire Valley and Mont Saint Michel yesterday. Today I give you the commentary that should have accompanied those pictures. I was just too dang tired to write this last night. I have to post this using my phone's internet connection, so in the interest of saving bandwidth I won't post the pictures again. Please refer to yesterday's post (or to the last set of pictures I posted on Facebook) to see pictures of the stuff I'm talking about here.

While for the most part I will talk about my visit to the Loire Valley in this post, I am writing and posting it well after having departed from the Loire. That is because I was dealing with the biggest bump in the road that I’ve ever met while traveling – my car was broken into and my day bag was stolen (which I will admit isn’t all that mountainous of a bump, all things considered). It was the first time I’ve ever been a crime victim in Europe, so I was probably due. I had left my day bag well-hidden (I thought) in my car while I visited the Château de Cheverny, and when I got back to my car I found the side window smashed and my day bag gone. At first I was kind of dumbfounded and in disbelief – this really happened to me? – and then, as I began to take stock of everything that was in my day bag that I would either be without or would have to replace, I became a mixture of angry and dejected. The funny thing was, there was absolutely nothing of significant monetary value in that bag, and the one thing that would have had any value to the thief – my GPS – was left untouched in the glove box. And yet, that bag contained the items that were the most valuable to me personally, including my notebook containing all of my assorted thoughts and notes from the trip so far. As the list of important items that had been taken grew in my head, and as I began to realize how much leg work I would have to do between the police, the car rental company, my credit card company, etc, it quickly became apparent that my trip was going to have to go on hold for a bit while I controlled the damage. Anyway, I could go on and on about it (and in fact I just deleted a sizeable paragraph in which I had done just that), but I won’t. Suffice it to say, it was in fact a giant pain in the butt, although I was able to get a new rental car the next day and continue along to my next destination, Mont Saint Michel. I learned my lesson and will never leave any valuables, or anything that even looks like it might be valuable, in my car again (no matter how well I think it is hidden).

The real bummer was that the incident put a sour note on what had otherwise been a very good day and a half visiting the Loire Valley. The thing to see in the Loire Valley is its many chateaux, and that was exactly what I did. Chateaux ("chateaux" is the plural form of "chateau" in French) began springing up in the Loire Valley and became popular in the late Renaisssance (16^th century) and onward. They were primarily used as seasonal country residences by the French nobility. The chateaux of the Loire are simply some of the most beautiful buildings and estates in Europe, making them popular tourist destinations. I had arranged things so that I would have the most convenient access to what are considered the “best” chateaux of the Loire – Chenonceau, Chambord, and Cheverny. I started at Chenonceau, which is considered the jewel of the Loire chateaux, in order to try to beat the crowds. I failed in that endeavor, getting there at around 10 AM and finding it swamped, although it was still a good visit regardless. Chenonceau is the most popular of the Loire chateaux because it is easily the most picturesque, straddling the Cher River and possessing gardens that rival the best in Paris or Versailles in beauty (although not quite in size). It is also notable for its former residents, Diane de Poitiers, mistress to King Henry II of France, and later the king’s wife, Catherine de Medicis (of the famous and powerful Medici family from Florence), who kicked Diane out and moved herself in when Henry died. I braved the hordes of people as best I could, toured the chateau thoroughly inside and out, and then got out of dodge and moved on to less-crowded environs.

After Chenonceau I visited Chambord, the largest of the Loire chateaux and the winter hunting lodge to the upper crust of the French nobility. Among its royal occupants were King Francois I of France and King Louis XIV of France (also known as the Sun King and the builder of the lavish palace at Versailles). With its formidable size, Chambord is more like a castle than a hunting lodge, and a sizable one at that. The architect of Chambord is unknown, although it is thought that Leonardo Da Vinci, who lived his final year nearby in Amboise, may have contributed or at least been an influence. The chateau certainly does bear some hallmarks of Leonardo-esque Renaissance design, including a symmetrical cross floor plan and a double helix-shaped central stairway. In its current state Chambord is certainly a point of interest for architects and those who appreciate a building’s external design, but for the most part it lacks the original decoration and furnishings that some of the other chateaux have, making it less interesting on the inside. It is still very much worth a visit though. Side note about Chambord: if you check out my pictures, there is one I took that looks a lot like the credits logo from Downtown Abbey. Of course I didn't realize that until after I took it; I wish I could claim that it was intentional, but honestly, most of the good pictures I take rarely are.

My final (and favorite, aside from the aforementioned auto prowl) chateau of the day was Cheverny. Cheverny is the smallest of the three chateau that I visited, and also has the least grand external appearance (which is kind of like saying Mount McKinley is shorter than Mount Everest – they’re both pretty dang tall), but it possesses the best interior of them all, and also the most meticulously cared-for grounds. The reason why that is the case, at least in part, is that Cheverny has been continuously owned and occupied, from its construction in the early 17^th century to the present day, by the same family (the Huraults). When you visit Cheverny you get to tour nearly every room, except for the private quarters which the Hurault family still occupy, and every room is furnished and decorated just as it was in the chateau’s heyday. Thus, in combination with its grounds, which are the most immaculately-kept in the Loire (that I found), at Cheverny you get the best idea of what these places were like in centuries past, when a summer house in the Loire Valley was a must-have for European nobility. Another cool thing at Cheverny is the dog kennel, where dogs are still kept and trained for hunting. The dogs are fed once a day at 5:00 PM, when tourists can gather and watch the feeding spectacle. The keeper arranges a long line of raw chicken and other dog delicacies while the dogs bark and whine from the other side of a gate. Then at 5:00 on the dot, the keeper opens the gate and the dogs rush out, but they do not touch the food. They wait for the keeper’s signal before they begin eating, at which point they chow down like…well, like dogs that haven’t eaten in a day.

Finally, a few words about the place I stayed at and its restaurant. The place was called Auberge de Launay, a nice country hotel just off the highway near a village called Limeray. The hotel was nice, although nothing special, and the staff was also friendly and professional. What stood out about the place was its restaurant. I won’t go into the gory detail that I did describing my dinner in Beynac, but suffice it to say, my dinner there at Auberge de Launay was at least as good, if not better, than the great dinner I had in Beynac. In particular the place really treated the wine seriously, which was a fun thing to witness and experience. I selected a small bottle (convenient for solo diners, approximately three glasses) of a locally-made Cabernet Franc whose name I can’t remember from their mile-long wine list, which they brought to my table, opened, poured a small amount of, and then offered me the glass. I gathered that I was supposed to sample it and decide if I liked it or not. It was good, and so I said so, at which point they filled my glass (with a device that aerates the wine as they pour it of course) and left the rest of the bottle for me. I never reached the bottom of the glass until I finished the bottle because the wait staff were constantly refilling my glass for me. I used to feel pretty silly being waited on so attentively and trying to do as the French do and sniff, slurp, slosh, and sip the wine, and to some extent I still do, but I have enough experience now to know that no one else here thinks it's a bit weird. One guy in the restaurant who was also dining alone actually had two different wines, one of which was being chilled in an ice bath next to his table, and he was going full French-mode on both bottles. Like dinner, wine is serious business in France.

I am actually finishing this post two days after my visit to the Loire. Since then I’ve been to Mont Saint Michel and the World War II D-Day sites in Normandy. It has been a very good last couple of days, which I will try to get around to writing about tomorrow night. Tomorrow I have one more day in Normandy, and then I’ll be off to Paris to start the final week of my trip. I’ll have three days in Paris, then two in Bruges and two in Amsterdam, and then I’ll fly home. I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost three weeks. This trip really has flown by.