Loire Valley, France, June 28

We are staying in a picture perfect B & B. It is located in a cute old charming village. The whole place is about as perfect as you can get, other than the cute French family with a screaming and crying one year old! Other than that it is awesome.  

Interesting that many places in France don't have wash cloths and have beautiful towels that are dried outside and smell good, but are very rough. I think they are made that way on purpose. The towels are actually very nice and feel good as you dry off. At this place we have a top sheet, in Paris we had the more traditional German /Austrian/Swiss duvet with no top sheet. I like that!

Here is our breakfast room...

And our room..

Today we visited a very famous Chataux, the most visited in this area, Chennonceau. It was very beautiful! We enjoyed the gardens and took a tour inside.

We were waiting for our crepe....

This is where Leonardo Di Vinci lived the last three years of his life. We took a tour and learned about all his inventions and his life. This was also the guesthouse of the Chataux up on the hill behind it, Amboise.

Amboise Chataux 

There are roses all over France and most of them smell great!

After we left Di Vinci's house there were tons of cars driving the narrow roads all honking their horns, it was a wedding procession. They drove all over the village and then again and again. I told Monte to join in, but he wouldn't. I thought it would be fun!

This is Chaumont Chateaux

This is Montrichard, a chateaux in ruin.

We saw a lot today even with light rain. We walked to Chennonceau and it was dry, got into the castle and it rained, came out and it stopped. Hope our luck continues!

We had a great dinner tonight recommended by our host. It was so nice Monte and Paige would not let me take pictures, but the really weird thing about it was that there were paintings on the wall that looked like the south west and modern sculptures plus 1970's rock and roll in the background with about 6 songs that played over and over! 

Paige has decided to try wine on this trip. She has had a glass each night with dinner. There have been varying opinions about the wine, but tonight she loved it. We asked our waitress what kind of wine it was and she told us in one long French sentence that gave us no clue what it was! Here wines are named by their vineyard not by the kind of grape.

The food was wonderful! We had an aperitif, a rabbit appetizer, a glass of white, dry wine, cod fish, dessert of carmel apple something. Sorry...no pictures....well just a couple I took quick!

Monte takes any chance he can to drop a business card (as usual) and he tried to explain to our waiter that he sold Esspresso machines in the US. The waiter gave us a look that we interpreted as he understood that Monte owned an Esspresso company! We knew we couldn't try to converse enough to correct that.

Interesting observations: the euro only comes in paper from a €5 and up denominations. Under €5 are only coins. The coins come in small .5 .10 etc. but they also have a €1 and €2 coin.

There are no screens on the windows and everyone leaves their windows open all the time, but very few bugs around, but for some reason we always get the ONE fly that buzzes around the restaurant.

We noticed several times in these little French villages that friends on the street will stop and talk to someone while they are in their house at the window. The windows are tall and narrow coming at waist level so when the window is open it is like the people are standing face to face talking since there are no screens.

We LOVE France!

Loire Valley, France day 6 June 27

We had to say goodbye to the hussle and bussle of Paris. We really loved it all, except for the drivers. Monte always says the pedestrians have the right of way, maybe that is an American rule because it isn't a French one. However, just yesterday a man stopped his car at a green light just to allow Paige to get across the street in her wheelchair. We were extremely impressed with the French people. Well...maybe not all of them like the taxi driver who blew us off this morning. Luckily our chechout person for our apartment noticed we had not been picked up so she called another taxi...we were lucky!

Ernest Hemingway lived right up the street were we stayed. That was kind of cool. We loved the small homey neighborhood. Lots of people out partying, especially with the World Cup going on. We have often heard cars and busses of people blowing horns playing music and cheering as they drive all over town. I heard they were mostly Algerian's.

This is daytime ...

  

We had a quick train ride out of Paris and into Tours to pick up a rental car then headed for Villandry Gardens and Chataux. Beautiful! Paige had an awesome chance to ride a horse in the garden. She was able to ride him pretty fast! She loved it.

Next we headed for Chinon to see the medieval village and fortress. That was great too. Rain had been threatening all afternoon and we almost made it. Had a bit of lunch in the car.

We ended up shopping, but us girls only do one kind of shopping....

It is only right to cap off a great day with a great meal....

Paige informed me that she likes "vacation mom" a lot better than normal mom. I guess I'm a lot more fun when I spend money! It is so easy to spend money here because the money is like board game money. It doesn't look real. Plus, with the exchange rate it makes it even seem better. Dinner tonight only cost 31€ per person. Hearing that 31 seems expensive but not too bad, and with fake money it is easy. Now, if you do the math you find that meal really cost $43. So, they key is just pretend it is fake and you can have a whole lot of fun!

Paris day 5, June 26

Today was a day of blunders, just trying to figure things out, but a fabulous day as well. Did I mention that we have not figured out how to use the stove, or the washing machine? We gave up on the stove but we really wanted to do laundry while we were here. Even the English directions were really bad. We finally figured it out ( you know, the one machine for both wash and dry- in the kitchen cabinets). The dry cycle was 3 hours! The clothes get really hot even when it is time to remove them and the feel kind of damp like they use steam to dry...kind of weird, then they come out wrinkly.

Today we went to Versailles. Gorgeous! Our first problem was leaving late. Then we had about a 30 min walk to the train station. The figuring out what train and where it was. But finally we made it. We had about 5 hours to visit. We took a tram out to Marie Antoinette's hamlet..but we didn't get off at the right stop so we got back on and ended up at the beginning. We bought round trip tickets so they were not going to let us go again. But, Monte convinced them in his best French! So off we went. It was a long walk and too difficult for the wheelchair, but also too difficult for Paige. Somehow, she made it!

We also visited Marie Antoinette's house, like a retreat from Versailles. Paige loved it. We had about 2 hours left to make it to Versailles, but we did it. We have been before but wanted to see it again. Turns out they had only one elevator that held barely 3 people. We saw what we could in that time, especially the "hall of mirrors". When we were done they took us back to the elevator to go down. Here is the cool part...each time they took us to the elevator we walked in other rooms away from where the tourists go. One lady named things for us while we walked/ wheeled  through rooms. Only problem was she spoke no English and we couldn't understand a word she said, but we saw incredible things behind the scenes, like a chaise that looked like it was pulled, AMAZING! Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures of that.

We returned home, hoping we got on the right train since we couldn't figure it out, then had a fabulous dinner- our seating time was 9:30 and we got home at 11:30. For Monte....it was a miracle he was awake through it!

Goodbye Paris, we'll miss you!