Touvet

Today mom and I went to the chateau du Touvet, in the Gresivaudan, to the East of Grenoble.  After a very short drive, we followed the tree lined entry, parked and bought a ticket.  I soon found myself in a conversation with the woman at the ticket booth about where we were from, and the usual questions about what we were doing there.  It turned out that she was from St. Egreve, and did I know that there was a chateau in St. Egreve, too?  It turned out that the current owner of the chateau du Touvet (their family has been in charge for the last 500 years) used to own the chateau in which we live, and had broken it up into apartments and sold it.  We all laughed together about the coincidence before the bell for the tour rang, and mom and I had to quickly shuffle off down the very long but impressive driveway.  The tour began with a description of how the castle used to guard against some hostile neighbors (The Savoyards), of which there were a couple in the tour with us, who took it in stride.  The docent told us that the gardens used to be even more majestic when they could afford ten gardeners instead of one.  Ah, la crise!

Once after we entered the castle, I immediately took a photo of the impressive entry, and was as usual told that photography was not permitted.  It seems that not even the smallest of public places has escaped this irritating anti-photography trend.


Next on the tour was the salon, where there were two big basins which were apparently used for rinsing your hands after eating utensil-less.  There was also a table on which the aristocrats would place their dead animals after the hunt.  The flooring in this room and all of the other rooms that we saw (only the ground floor, unfortunately) was spectacular.  Up next, the music room, where I was mostly fixated on the floor again, which was a mix of noyer (walnut), merisier (wild cherry) and Erable (maple).  Stunning.

I don't remember too many details about the rest of the tour, except that there were extremely wide chairs to accomodate the huge hooped dresses of some particular era.  At one point, the docent asked us what we thought the boudoir was for, and one wag replied "pour bouder!", which received some laughs.  After looking it up, I discovered that "bouder" is "to sulk".  So I learned some vocabulary!  We also saw a cool yew table which was made from yews felled from the St. Egreve chateau.  I actually noticed that there were some Yew trees on the grounds, and had started to make Alex a bow with some branches, until I read that every part of the tree except parts of the berry is extremely poisonous.

After the tour, mom and I wandered the gardens and grounds