I can't believe people used to live here.

On Saturday, I went on an excursion with CIDEF. We didn't even have an entire bus of people, so it was pretty nice and low key. We still lost someone though. I'll talk about that later though. I had to be at the university at 7:15 AM, and when my alarm went off at 6:00 AM, I just stared at it trying to figure out why I was getting up so early. I had legitimately forgotten. But luckily I remembered and I dragged myself out of bed and got there. There were some other Americans and some Asians, but I predominately stuck with Inga and Becca for the trip. The three of us made a good group. The bus ride was about 3 hours out, and we slept for most of it. The rocking was actually quite soothing. The first chateaux was Amboise, in the city of Tours:




This is also the burial place of Leonardo da Vinci, who designed the chateau, so it was really, really cool to see that. But he just has a marble slab, as you can see in the photos, so it was kind of a let down I guess. I mean, he's one of the greatest minds in all of Western history and there's not much to his final resting place at all. There's not even a legit barrier keeping people from walking all over him. Oh well; it was about the same with Jacques Cartier's burial place in St. Malo.

Amboise itself was pretty generic as chateaux go. I mean, that sounds kind of harsh, but it's basically a big stone house. There wasn't much there (other than da Vinci's bones) to distinguish it from the other chateaux I've seen. There was a real fire going in one of the fireplaces, which was nice because it was actually quite cold. I will admit that the garden was amazing. The bushes are all trimmed into spheres and there is a bust of da Vinci. There are also some arabic-themed motifs there, I haven't figured out why yet. But other than that, there wasn't much ambiance. Kind of like with Mont St. Michel: after a while, all the big, empty stone rooms start to look the same.



Next, we walked a little bit aways to da Vinci's house, Clos Lucé. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, which was a shame because there were some really nice looking reproductions of his work. A bunch of his quotations were etched in glass and framed on the walls, so we spent some time just looking at those and discussing them. They were all in french though. It's interesting, because it's pretty easy to translate them, and I've read the english versions enough, but it's almost like there is a difference sense with the french versions. It's like when I read The Stranger for the first time in french, and I realized that the english and french versions are basically two completely different books. (Not really, of course, but there is so much that is lost in translation.) Next, we did a brief tour of his garden, but there really wasn't much to see since nothing has budded out yet. From the Terrace we could see Amboise, and apparently da Vinci liked to sit outside and "gaze upon" his masterpeice. Not exactly my idea of the best way to pass time, but then again I haven't constructed a huge chateau that's lasted a couple of centuries.

The three of us then got some lunch--I had the most amazing pizza with goat cheese, oregano, semi-cooked bacon, creme fraice, and HONEY. I'm going to have to find a recipe or something because it was pretty spectacular. We didn't realize it until later, but somewhere in Tours we lost a member of the excursion. I saw her today at UCO, so I know she got back, but, yeah. I can't believe that happened. I think the head count got screwed up or something.




Next, we went to the Chateau of Blois, which was significantly more interesting than Amboise. It's been constructed over four different time periods, and I couldn't get all of them into one photo. The courtyard is mostly white stone, and there is a single white tree, and Becca and I were going crazy over the Lord of the Rings implications. There is a photo of me staring up into said tree, pondering my fate in Middle Earth. The interior was much more intricately detailed than Amboise--the majority of the rooms had hardwood floors and handpainted wall paper. I thought it was wallpaper at first, but then I was like "silly Porter, they didn't have wallpaper then. Someone did this all by hand!" There were also radiators throughout, which was very nice as it was pretty chilly outside. The former royal apartments have been trasformed into a small museum with some statues and paintings, mostly portraits. All in all it was a very good visit.




Finally, my favorite!! They were clearly saving the best for last. Cheverny is most definitely the most "modern." It's still used as a private residence by the family that's owned it for at least a century. I'm pretty sure it falls into the "hunting lodge" category since they still raise hunting dogs and do the traditional hunt during the season with the horses and the red coats. The inside has been updated, and I really, really liked it. I could see myself living there, to be honest. The decor and the general layout of the house reminds me a lot of legitimate American colonial style homes. I loved all of the tulips and crystal and china and I ended up taking some kind of artsy perspective photos.

There is a dog run out back with about 40 large hunting dogs. There's a huge sign that says "do not excite the animals" and when you realize that these dogs hunt down foxes and other woodland creatures, you really don't want to! There was kind of an awkward/bad moment when a small child, maybe 5 years old, started running up and down the side of the dog run and the dogs got all riled up and started chasing him! I was just glad that there was a fence between them...they're definitely not domesticated dogs. I actually felt kind of bad for them, because I just wanted to give them all baths and take them for a little walk around the garden because it seems like they just spend all of their time in that concrete floored dog run.

It was on our way home from this chateau that we realized that we hadn't seen Liz since Amboise. But I guess everything worked out alright? I don't want to talk to her and be like "sooo, did we accidently leave you?" Other than that hiccup, it was a pretty successful day and I'm really glad I went.

In a couple of days I'll be in Paris with Margaux and Sara, and then Normandy beaches the next week! I hope to post another blog just rambling about whats great/horrible about France so far and so on. I took some photos of the neighborhood where I live so I can talk about that some. I hope you're all doing well and I can't wait to see you soon!!

Oh, and all of the pictures of the Chateaux are in this album. I need to do a massive upload for facebook too; I haven't uploaded any pictures the whole time I've been here!