The night of November 5th - Arriving in our place was awesome, after a stressful ride from Paris it was good to to finally arrive. Our airbnb host greeted us and sat with us, pouring us wine and hanging out. The host didnt speak any English and we speak no French. Dom and her were able to talk some in Spanish. This was an interesting experience, working with somebody for a few days, without knowing each others languages. Just shows how far hand signals, saying shit in your own language and body language can get you.
Our Airbnb Spot (2 nights one day)
THe place we are staying in, is in the middle of vine gardens and is built into a cave, looks like a mini castle. Very different.
Woke up in our mini castle, had a French breakfast, Sylvie (our hostess), ran out and got fresh baggetes. Interestingly enough, everything the french buy / cook is bought that day.
We started the morning off heading to Chenanceux, an incredible chateux, highly recommended. Was a very warm and positive experience, this is the first place you can see yourself living in, just feels natural, in nature and setup like stuff was back then.
We wrapped up around 11a and headed towards Blois, deciding not to do the 3 chateaus in one day (as Rick Steves guide recommended).
BLois is a cool little town, for a very short time this was the center of France as a king had his main home there. The town is cool looking w the narrow streets and old school looking stuff. We stumbled into a great local spot. Bruchettas (https://plus.google.com/105992204943001999889/about?hl=en&gl=be, the link doesnt seem to be the right address, but thats the spot and the name, included a pic of the sign below. Our meal was a big piece of bread, steak, small potatoes and a "gravy like" sauce. Accompanied by a few bottles of local vino, a dessert crepe made for an amazing, local dining "experience".
The Chateau itself is a disappointment, poorly organized, no directions and no historical audio guide.
Town of Blois
Blois Lunch at the Bruschetta Spot
Blois Chateaux
View from Blois Chateuaux
The rest of the night was spent searching for places in Nice and Rome. Rome has some interesting challenges in that you cannot drive in an ZTL zone if you are not a resident of Rome. Which pretty much forces us to keep things simple, stay out of that zone, parking our car at the airbnb we found.
Next morning we had a late start to the day, we left shortly after an 11 am breakfast, for a 10 hour drive to Nice...
Map of the Loire Valley
Takeaways:
- I can see spending some down time in this area, checking out the views and Chateaus, wineries, local food and towns for a week or two. This place is tough for a single day trip, I would definitely recommend spending at least a few days here in warm weather and long days. Planning to see some chateaus, drink some local vinos and eat the local cuisine
- Interesting thing about this area is the 15-16th century influences in architecture and the royal life style. It does make you wonder, how they moved around without cars, finding these beautiful places, building these monsters. Also, the royal court, cooks, food, EVEN FURNITURE, moved around w/ the royalty wherever they went. Wasnt until 1600~ or so did they actually have furniture that stayed at the chateau. Crazy.
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