Chenonceau, Blere, no toilets

We had a fairly long day of driving today; when I was planning the itinerary, we needed to find a way to get from Albi/Cordes up to Paris without having any killer driving days. Also, I knew Paris was not going to be fun in a car, so I decided to make a stop in Chateaux country, and Blere in particular. While giving us a few longish driving days, it made the next days drive to Paris quite easy. We had chosen Blere and the hotel Cheval Blanc based on the recommendation in the Karen Brown guide, and also because Chloe has not been to the Loire before, and I wanted her to see at least one of the castles!

We started the day with breakfast at the hotel in Collonges-la-Rouge. The breakfast was excellent, and the highlight was homemmade jams and preserves made from fruit from the property. It was served on a family heirloom: a beautiful farmers table whose only fault was being a bit low and bumping into your knees occasionally. In a funny turn of events, at the communal breakfast table it was discovered that one of the other couples had a daughter about to start an internship for KPFA in Berkeley! We gave them our contact info to help her find a place to stay when she gets here.

Chloe had noticed that there was an antique fair in a neighboring town so we headed there after breakfast and checking out. As usual, there were quite a few nice things, but our lack of transportation options limited what we could actually buy. Chloe found a cute little baby high chair:

And bought it in spite of my protestations.

From the antique fair, we started the long drive North. This turned out to be a little painful. The GPS, while excellent for navigating within cities, does not seem to have any information on the relative sizes of the "Departmental" roads, and routes you on very very small roads. Additionally, it being Sunday, there were more flea markets than you could shake a stick at. This wouldn't have bothered us had it not been for the fact that the towns would close down the center of town and the road that runs through it for the fair. This caused much hair pulling and driving in reverse on tiny roads.

We eventually got arrived in the Loire valley and headed for Chenonceau before it closed. It turns out that we would have done better to go later in the day (it's open wuite late), because the castle was absolutely thronged and was not much fun to visit. The highlight of the self guided tour for me was the cool kitchen in the "basement" (in the piers of the castle in the river Cher).

look at this stove!


a few other pictures:
Kenji and Gail from above

kayaking the moat

the cold shoulder

and of course the beautiful castle itself

Chloe in the gardens

me in the gardens


It also rained briefly


and then we headed for Blere and checked into the Cheval Blanc. Things were pretty quiet in town, it being a Sunday on a long weekend but we had a decent pizza dinner at a restaurant around the corner. Unfortunately, the water was off when we got back to the hotel, which meant no showers (annoying), no drinking water (also annoying) and no flushing toilets (cause for rebellion). I was so tired from the drive that I fell asleep immediately, but was woken up at various points later on in the evening by the noises of other hotel guests trying to turn the water back on. You see, no one was at the front desk, and the hotel phones stopped working as well. Very annoying.