Sunday 5th September.
Now just to confuse you and myself, the routine changes, I got to have
a sleep in, breakfast at 7.30 for a change but still only 45 minutes
before we are 'bob' to continue our tour of the Loire Valley. Our
first stop was Chateau de
Chenonceau (The Ladies Chateau). Now, here's a chateau whose
history is sad as well as interesting. As with the other chateaux
I am not going to bore you with all the nitty gritty, if you're really
interested you can click on the link and read it for yourself.
10.30 saw us arriving in Cheverny for a wanderaround another
chateau. Cheverny is located in Sologne, near Blois, and is one
of the first stately homes to open to the public in 1922.
Although this chateau has changed hands a few times over the centuries,
it is now back in the hands of the original owners' decendents.
The family occupy the top floor of the chateau and can often been seen
wandering the grounds, not that we saw them. There are kennels on
the grounds where the hunting hounds are housed. They hunt wild
bore. For more information go to Chateau de
Cheverny. For those of you that grew up with Tin Tin and his
adventures you might be interested to know that Chateau Cheverny was
the inspiration behind Marlinspike Hall,
Tin
Tin's home base, and there is a Tin Tin museum on the chateau
grounds.
After leaving Cheverny we had a 25minute drive to our last chateau of
the tour, Chateau
de Chambord, sorry but you're getting another Wiki link as the
official website doesn't tell you anything about the history of the
chateau. The double staircase was impressive but never worked out
whether we came down the same stairs we went up, felt a bit like being
in an Escher picture. At the end of this chateau tour we had a
group photo taken with our guides, Leila and Jean-Christophe, and
driver Jan (Yan) not sure how it was spelt. We also had a photo
taken of the original group that started out on day 1 from Paris and
were still together on day 4 for our return to Paris.
The last 4 days have been a fantastic experience thanks to Leila and
Jan. I have to commend our driver on his driving skills around
the small village streets, I'd hate to have to try and drive a normal
bus through them let alone a tour coach but he did it with ease, or at
least that's how it appeared. Leila was with us from the
beginning of the tour and her enthusiasm for her job and its topics had
us all enthralled. If you ever want to do the same tour I
recommend you request Leila as your tour guide when you book. You
will not be disappointed. Thanks also to the group that I
travelled with over the 4 days, from all corners of the world, many
from Oz, The US, Canada, Brazil & Asia, they sure made the journey
interesting.
You'll be happy to know that we are 'bob' for the last time in this
adventure and heading back to Paris, hoping that the traffic is good to
us all the way back. 5.50 and we've hit a traffic jam, nothing
like the Mitchell car park
though, at least we are still moving at a reasonable pace. 6.05
and whatever was causing the problem has cleared and we're off and
rolling, but
I've spoken too soon, 6.09 and welcome to the Mitchell carpark.
We arrived back at the Cityrama office at 6.30 so the going wasn't too
bad. We said our au revoirs and took a taxi back to the Chamonix
for my last night in Paris. Exhausted but it was well worth it to
have seen as much as I did in such a short time.
I hope you have enjoyed my adventure around France and are looking
forward to the next adventure, Canada. If you have managed to
look at all the photo's so far you have viewed about 460 pics.
Lucky for you lot you get a bit of a break now before the next lot go
up.
