taking tours in tours

This weekend, 3 friends and I took a little trip to Tours, located in the Loire Valley just north of Bordeaux by 2 1/2 hours. While there is not much to see in Tours, there are hundreds of châteaux in the region to visit, and so we stayed one night at a hostel in the city but went on a little day trip both days we were there.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome trip. We saw two beautiful castles: Château Chenonceaux and Château Royal d'Amboise. Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years in Amboise, and so he is buried in the chapel of the château there. Down the road from this château, we got to see the smaller château where da Vinci lived during his time in Amboise. The château, called the Clos Lucé, is now a museum and is surrounded by a park showing his inventions, built to scale. This last stop was actually my favourite out of all three, perhaps because I actually know some things about da Vinci, whereas I don't know as much about Henri II or François Ier or Catherine de Medici. The Clos Lucé was cool because we got to see the room where da Vinci slept, where he relaxed by the fire, where he ate, etc. The basement of the château was also really neat because on display were little models of all of the inventions he made diagrams and outlines for. The park was really nice to walk through, although we had to wait until it stopped raining to venture through it.

Another thing we saw in Amboise were these houses called maisons troglodytes. They are houses that are built in hollowed out rock walls... really cool! I'll put pictures of the Clos Lucé and these houses on later; my camera's battery died and I couldn't take any pictures after the Château d'Amboise.

I do have to make mention of the other highlight of out trip: the man who ran the hostel. He was so awesome! We'd called to reserve the room about a week ago, but every couple of days I'd call again to add one more person. I know he was going to say something about this when we arrived, and sure enough, he remembered me and told us he'd been waiting to hear from us again so we could add a fifth person to our room. He's one of those people who really likes to talk, and so we ended up talking for 1/2 hour about what we were studying, why we were in Tours, etc etc. It was he who recommended Chenonceaux to us, cuz we hadn't planned on visiting that one. I'm glad we did though. Anyway, my favourite was when we said 2 of us where from Canada and the other two from the States, and he went a pulled out a huge map of the USA so Danielle and Nancy could point out their cities. He really likes meeting people from all over the world it seems. At the end of our stay when we went to pick up our bags, he was all proud and showed us 2 little pins, one of the Manitoba logo and one of the Winnipeg airport logo. Turns out a Winnipegger had stayed there at some point the year before and sent him the pins after she got home. I think Kristin and I may need to send him a postcard when we get back home...

Here are a few pics from my trip. The first two are 2 different angles of Chenonceaux. As you can see, it's really beautiful because it's built over the Cher River. The next two are in Amboise, the first near a church built in 1521 (L-R: Nancy, Danielle, Kristin). If you're wondering why Danielle looks pregnant, it's not because she is, it's because she was on a mission to take a picture of a big stuffed cow puppet with a castle for her Sunday school kids back home, and didn't have a bigger side bag to carry him in. Thus, the only solution was to carry him under her jacket... of course. The last 2 pictures are in Tours: there are poppies everywhere there, and it was the first time I've ever seen a real live one, never mind all the different colours! The last one is the Cathédrale St-Gatien in Tours, a beautiful cathedral that looks a lot like Notre Dame de Paris on the inside. And that's all for now!