Chambord and Cheverny

Sorry it has taken a bit of time to get to this.  It rained all weekend so it was hard to get down to it because I was feeling lazy.  And this morning the sun is out for the first time in about a week--fleeting as it may be--- and I have been out in the back garden trying to plant things.

But here I am again.  It was just over a week ago that Mary, Chuck and I woke up on a very rainy morning in Amboise and took off for two more chateaux, Chambord and Cheverny.

Chambord is one of the largest chateaux in the area.  It is huge, And absolutely gorgeous from the outside.

Francois the 1st--perhaps with the help of Leonardo Da Vinci-- designed it around a center staircase, which takes up a lot of the room.

Is is also very cold.  And we were soaking wet, so that did not help.  It's not as fully furnished as Chernonceaux  but it is still lush, in the rooms that are available for tourists to see.

Here is the King's bedroom, very big and not very cozy.  There was a smaller room right next door that he slept in on occasion.  (I would choose it every night).

As I said, the place is cavernous, with a lot of wasted space in the middle.  The story is that Francois the first would only stay here for four or five days at a time.  I can certainly understand that,  It's beautiful, but it's cold in both temperature and atmosphere.

There are pigeons living in the chapel...

and graffiti carved into many of the walls...very sad really.

By this time, Mary was at the cafe having a warm cup of tea to take the chill off.  Chuck and I decided to go up the staircase as far as we could and we were rewarded for our trouble.  Not only did you get a close-up view of the turrets of the building

but also the grounds.

As you can see from the picture above, one of the owners of the castle had a canal built to keep water away from  the chateaux.  A lot of this part of the country appears to be marshland and so there has been a lot of engineering to keep some of the land dry for building.

The lands around Chambord, which was used by the king and the subsequent owners as a hunting lodge, are supposedly bigger than the land mass of Paris proper.  But if there is a lesson to be learned it is that a beautiful design, even one with input from Da Vinci, does not a home make.

So we bid farewell to Chamborg and were on our way the Cheverny, which, unlike the other chateaux that we saw, is still lived in by the owners.  You could really tell--it was a lot warmer and more inviting.

But it was still very imposing from the outside.

This is the first room we see, the dining room.

Then it was on to the hall and the staircase with antlers that were apparently 6,000 years old and found either on the property or nearby.

To give you an idea of the big the antlers are--and the animal they came from...here's a picture of Mary below them.  The brochure says the antlers are hung at the level they would have been on the animal.

Then there is the birthing room, where a new mother would present her baby, I gather.  A very pretty room.

Then there was a child's room, with apparently one of the first hobby horses in existence.

And then this room, with a wedding gown worn by one of the former residents.

It was just a lovely place to live.

Still, I don't know if I could live someplace where the public was constantly walking in and out and hanging around the property.

One of the biggest draws of this particular chateaux is the 70 hunting hounds that are kept on the property and fed every day at 5PM,  They are very disciplined and wait patiently until the handler lets them at the food.

Here is what it looks like....

And here is the result.

These hounds are a lot larger than I imagined they would be.  If I were a fox, I'd be really scared to think they had picked up my scent.

Cheverny also has some lovely gardens.

Another lovely day in the Loire Valley.  Then it was back to Amboise.  W went out to dinner at a nice place called the Lion.

Amboise, Da Vinci and Chenonceaux

After a somewhat relaxing day in St Fraimbault on Thursday--we actually had lunch in Bagnoles L'Orne--we were off to the Loire Valley on Friday morning.  We checked into our hotel in Amboise and went to the tourists office in the center of the city, right on the Loire River.  There is a huge castle that overlooks the city and the river that was one of the homes of King Francois the first, a great student of Leonardo da Vinci, who spent the last years of his life in Amboise.  Mary, who has seen many of the Loire Valey chateaux when she was a student here many years ago, recommended that we see Chenonceaux, Chamborg and Cheverny at the least and since we only had a day and a half, we got tickets for those sites and for the Clos Luce, which was Leonardo's home in Amboise.

We had lunch on the main drag of the old city, with the castle looming above us.

and walked along the street by the castle.  There are restaurants along the way.

Either the castle was built into the side of a hill, or it was built and then houses were built into it because on our left as we walked up the street, there were a number of homes in the rock.  They looked like they would be interesting inside.

Although at least one looked like it was abandoned.

This is the front of the Clos Luce, Da Vinci's last house.

It looks like it would have been very comfortable.

We saw a number of rooms like these in the few days we were in the Loire Valley.  Bedrooms that looked more like family rooms.  Apparently a lot of conversation took place in the bedrooms.

I really liked this dining room

With its busts of Francois I and Leonardo.

Mary says Francois is easily recognizable by his very big nose.

Leonardo looks like you would expect.

Apparently DaVinci had a number of apprentices at this house and their work is up on the walls.

There was even a copy of the Mona Lisa.

Here I am...walking in the footsteps of the genius.

The basement is filled with machines made to the specifications in DeVinci's drawings and writings.  There were a surprising number of guns and armaments and other necessities of war.

In the backyard, it looked more like Renaissance Italy than France.

And there was a guide talking to kids in the garb of DaVinci's time.

Of course, there are a lot of half-timbered houses in Amboise.  I especially liked this one with its complex design.

Click on the picture to see what I mean.

From Clos Luce we traveled to Chenenceaux, one of the most beautiful chateaux in the area.

It has an impressive entrance, over a canal,

through a walkway lined with huge plane trees.

Past a sphinx.

At first view the chateaux looks very much like Disney World.

There was really no way to take a bad picture of the building.

As you can see,it is actually built over the Cher River, a tributary of the Loire.  And it is surrounded by two beautiful gardens, one belonging to the wife of King Henry II, Catherine DeMedici, and one to his favorite mistress, Diane de Poitiers.  (More abut those ladies later).

We liked Catherine's garden better; it was smaller and more intimate....

 But Diane's was also beautiful....

Except for this little house with its wisteria, which I always think looks scary.

Anyway, the house is very beautiful inside.  And the people take care of it beautifully, with fresh flowers everywhere.  Here is Diane's bedroom.

Henry II treated Diane very well, even installing her in this lovely house.  But when he died in a jousting accident with a lance through the eye, his wife Catherine De Medici threw Diane out---who wouldn't-- and put a very stern picture of herself over the fireplace in this room.  And Catherine never slept in this room.

Catherine was the mother of three kings of France, Francois II, Charles IX and Henry III--she outlived all but Henry and was for quite a good part of her life the real leader of France.  She ruled must of that time from this house.

It has a large chapel 

And great hall....

where you can look out the window right on the river.

One of the main tttractions of the house is all the paintings, many of French kings including Louis XIV, the so-called "Sun King"

who apparently spent time here.   This is a painting by Reubens.

And here's one of Diane de Poitiers, no doubt put up after the time of Catherine.

All in all, it was quite a lovely house.

That night we ate in a restaurant called Epicerie, which means grocery store in French, I am told.  Had a wonderful meal.