Chateau de Chenonceau

I've been to the Loire Valley before to see chateaux. But there was one chateau that I've seen pictures of, but had never seen myself. It was on the list of things for me and Hugs to go see this summer: Le Chateau de Chenonceau.

The week I arrived back in Paris, some planning on how to move my things from Besançon to Marseille went a little crazy, and I called my friend Mrs. X to get a little peace of mind. She said, "We'll be in the north of France at the end of the month, if you meet us in Tours, we'll drive you over to get your stuff and take it down to Marseille." My boss approved it, and next thing I knew, I was off to Tours to meet up with Mr. and Mrs. X...and see a chateau along the way.

Hugs and I had purchased our train tickets a few weeks earlier to get down to Tours. The morning of the excursion, we timed how long it would take to get to the train station, and gave ourselves 20 extra minutes to print out the tickets and get on the train. That would've worked great, except...

...Hugs had forgotten her bank card at home.

She got in line to try to sweettalk the lady into printing her ticket for her anyway. I watched the line, watched the clock, got more nervous, and wondered what to do. I finally went to a ticket machine, bought Hugs a whole new train ticket, hollered for her to come on, and we RAN across the station, jumping onto the last door of the train right before it left. (Seems like running for trains to Loire is a common occurrence for me...)

The chateau was totally worth running for a train. It is built on a bridge over a river, which was really cool to see. Each room was so interesting (I can't say that about all chateaux), but especially the kitchen! I was fascinated by it, and kept wondering what Julia Child would think of all those copper pots!

There was a garden labyrinth, which Hugs and I raced through. (She won.) There were gardens galore. There was a wax museum (not interesting). There was history oozing out of the place, which made me excited to get home and read up on the internet about the place and the people who had lived there.

You can see pictures of the outside of the chateau HERE and the inside HERE.

Hugs took the train back to Paris that night, and Mr. and Mrs. X and I began our trip to move my stuff. Nothing too exciting to tell...although playing the license plate game in France means looking for other countries' plates (we saw 20), and all the departments of France (we saw 76 of the 100). It was a fun little get-away trip...and now everything I own (except the one suitcase with me here in Paris) is all in Marseille.

I took the train back up to Paris...and crossed one more thing off my touristy wish list.