Back to Burgundry, having loved the Loire

Health update: Jack did, in fact, have his sisters' bug, but weathered it fairly well and was back to his usual silly sweet self by Sunday afternoon (and in pretty good spirits the whole time). I do sometimes wonder about the competitive spirits of our children, though. There was a lot of comparing of who threw up how many times in France (Katie had the edge on the other two thanks to her earlier stomach bug the day of our French fiesta). Such pleasant, pleasant conversation. The good news is that all three kids appear fully healthy and are back in school this morning. It also appears that Jack grew two inches or so during his illness... seriously, his pants on Sunday morning were two inches too short!

Loire update: Oh my goodness. The Loire blew us all away. I don't know why, but I hadn't imagined it would be quite so.... big, magnificent, huge, beautiful, incredible, and (at times) excessive (makes you kind of understand how that whole French Revolution could have happened). I had (naively) planned for us to see two chateaux a day. Yeah, right! Even without slightly sick kids, the most we could have taken in was one a day... and even then, we left without examining every corner, every room, every masterpiece of art or architecture. There was just so much to see, and our brains could not process all of the beauty and awe. Nice problem to have, isn't it?

On Saturday, we visited Chambord, a "hunting lodge" constructed by King Francois I in the 1500s (to be near his mistress) which many consider to be the greatest of the chateaux of the Loire (what with its 440 rooms, 365 fireplaces, and 84 staircases, including a famous double-helix rumored to be designed by Leonardo Da Vinci). A bit of history courtesy of Wikipedia:

Chambord is the largest castle in the Loire Valley, but was built to serve only as a hunting lodge for François I, who maintained his royal residences at Château de Blois and at Château d'Amboise.

...The château was never intended to provide any form of defense from enemies; consequently the walls, towers and partial moat are purely decorative, and even at the time were an anachronism. some elements of the architecture - open windows, loggia, and a vast outdoor area at the top — borrowed from the Italian Renaissance architecture — are less practical in cold and damp northern France.

The roofscape of Chambord contrasts with the masses of its masonry and has often been compared with the skyline of a town: it shows eleven kinds of towers and three types of chimneys, without symmetry, framed at the corners by the massive towers. ...When François I commissioned the construction of Chambord, he wanted it to look like the skyline of Constantinople.

...One of the architectural highlights is the spectacular double-helix open staircase that is the centerpiece of the castle. The two helixes ascend the three floors without ever meeting, illuminated from above by a sort of light house at the highest point of the castle. There are suggestions that Leonardo da Vinci may have designed the staircase, but this has not been confirmed.

We all loved the staircase, and chased each other up, up, up and down, down, down, marveling at the beauty of the symmetry and design (well, we marveled... the kids simply thought it was "so cool!"). I loved wandering the rooftop and looking over the landscape, walking amid the towers and turrets and dream-like design of the place. I don't know that the pictures will do it justice... maybe it's one of those things you have to see yourself. If that's the case... well, I can solidly argue that this is worth seeing. It's incredible to believe that humans could have constructed such a thing.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, we happily drove about 75 minutes to our next destination... a chateau that has been converted into a hotel! This was mom's wish... to spend a night in a chateau. We sent lists back and forth, and settled on one she had found online, the Chateau de la Bourdaisiere. It dates from the 1400s, although its current look is much smaller (a more manageable size for a chateau, bien sur).

Although *not* a part of the chateau's general information, I just read that the beautiful building and its grounds were the site of the first Joe Millionarie television show! Oh my!


One better known (and better publicized) aspect of the hotel-chateau's more recent history is that it is owed by the same Prince who bought Deyrolle -- the amazing last taxidermy shop in Paris -- and helped ensure its survival both at the time of its purchase in 2001 and after the fire in 2008. The prince (apparently "just" a courtesy title these days) is also doing much to preserve and cultivate heirloom vegetables and plants. According to the hotel-chateau's website, the prince and his wife want to "transform the estate into a prime example of eco-renovation of an historical monument and lead the way to a sustainable management example for both the hotel and garden and the park. The Princess is in charge of the decoration, which will obviously be the transcended mix of Le Prince Jardinier, Deyrolle and their common curiosity."

Did I mention it was really, really cool? 

We lingered at our castle, watching the kids run around the beautiful grounds, until checkout time, then headed to our second "big" castle of the weekend, the Chateau de Chenonceau. If Chambord is considered the "greatest" of the chateaux of the Loire, Chenonceau is often considered the most beautiful. It was designed by women for women. According to its website, Chenonceau is known as "Château des Dames as recorded in the French history books, [and] owes a large part of its charm to women: it was built in 1513 by Katherine Briçonnet, then made even more attractive by Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Médicis, and saved from the rigours of the French Revolution by Mrs. Dupin."

The scale of this chateau was much smaller (and maybe more pleasing) than Chambord, and many of the rooms had the bedding and decoration of the different women who lived there. From the fabulous kitchens to the graceful views on both sides of the river to the incredible gardens (including a huge labyrinth the kids wanted to play in all afternoon), this chateau, too, was more ... everything... than we expected.

We took three tired but happy kids (and three tired but happy adults) back to our rental car at about 4 p.m. and headed home through many small rain showers, which had the unexpected benefit of creating at least a dozen rainbows along the road home (really!). John said it was a kind of relentless beauty... and it got even more beautiful as we came back to Burgundy. We decided we still do like it best here... but we would be happy -- very happy -- to return to the Loire one day.

I think I will upload the photos in four sections: the Abbey, Chambord, the hotel-chateau, and Chenonceau. Don't know how long that will take (we shot a mere 588 photos!) but hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we are going to head out to one last lunch with Mom, who leaves from Lyon tomorrow morning. It's been a wonderful visit, and we all will miss her so much. We are also starting to count down as it suddenly became May -- which means we have just 20 days left in our fabulous French home. Talk about people and places we will miss...

The lovely, lovely Loire

Health update: Kate is almost back to full health (her version of the Bug was faster but just as furious as Liv's) and so we took off this afternoon toward the Loire Valley, home of France's famous chateaux. After a few hours of enjoying the company of three nearly healthy kids, Jack started drooping at dinner and now seems to be battling a milder version of it at this moment (at least we hope it's a milder version!). Ah, kids. And germs. And the unpredictability of life. They all just kind of go together, don't they?

Loire update: Wow! We aren't even "officially" there yet, and all six of us are blown away. The drive here included some kind of bland countryside once we left Burgundy, but as soon as we headed off the autoroute down to Beaugency, a town along the Loire just west of Orleans, the superlatives started.

Tonight, we have the incredible thrill of staying in a former Abbey right along the Loire (although I have to tell you, if the monks who used to live here lived as well as we are living tonight... well, it's a pretty good argument for the monastic life!). We climbed up stairs where the stone has been worn away by hundreds of years of footfall; we walked down a hall toward our rooms ("Frere Victoire" for us, "Frere Perceval" for Mom) on sloping terra cotta-colored tiles. The huge wooden beams along the ceilings and the huge windows overlooking the Loire are all simply stunning. And the view... we threw open those huge windows and stared out at the lovely Loire.

Once we had a snack, we decided to explore the town a bit. As you probably know, I have become quite the fan of Burgundy in general and Beaune in particular. I was beginning to think that no where else in France could match it. But (I hate to say this), I *could* be wrong. Beaugency, a gorgeous town with its 14th century bridge, was freed by Joan of Arc in 1429. And its twisting streets and narrow lanes and flower-filled windows and soaring stone towers literally took our breath away. As Mom said, "There just aren't enough words".

I had planned to post some of the hundreds of beautiful photos we took today, but John's computer is uploading them sooooooo slowly that I am tempted to toss it out the window. In the interest of his beloved Mac, I will just leave you with a few.  I can't believe the *real* spectacular stuff still awaits us tomorrow...

A Montanan (and his family and friends) heads to les montagnes

The train strike continues to remind us that we are indeed living in France. Thankfully, after learning Kathy and Alex's scheduled trains to Paris were canceled yesterday, we were able to help them get on an earlier train and they made it to the airport after a bit of reorganizing (we kept talking about how you have to be flexible when you travel... this train strike is proof of that!). They should be on their way home right now.

It was a great visit -- and I think the highlight for our family was the trip to Chamonix-Mt Blanc in Les Alpes. (As an aside, Jack has been learning in school of all of the mountain ranges in France, and spent much of the trip describing not only where we were -- "Oh, we are now in Les Juras!" but describing the geography and history of the area (granted, some of his measurements were quite a bit off -- he told us, quite confidently, that Mt Blanc was 8,400 meters... when in fact it is closer to 4,800 or so). Still, I continue to be impressed with the schools here and all he is learning.)

It was Alex and Kathy who suggested heading to the Alps... we hadn't considered going there (just so many places to choose from), and now are so glad they did. Our friends John and Alli recommended heading to Chamonix, the site of the first winter Olympics and one of the four main cities of the region (the others-- Grenoble, Annecy, and Chambery, are much larger). Because they haven't steered us wrong so far, that's where we went. Since we are in a shoulder season (not the prime skiing time, nor the gorgeous summer mountaineering time), I was able to find a great deal on a little apartment right in the town, complete with small kitchenette and an indoor heated swimming pool (virtually guaranteeing that our kids would be thrilled, mountains or not).

To get there, we had to drive through The Autoroute of the Titans. Now, I am coming to believe if someone has taken the time to give a road a really great name (I'm thinking more "The Going to the Sun Road" versus "The New Jersey Turnpike"), it probably is going to be a great drive. That theory held up here, as we soared high above the valley on a road that included 12 viaducts and three tunnels and that did seem to be built by, or for, giants.

We had a picnic lunch at a beautiful rest stop on the amazing autoroute and headed into Chamonix in the afternoon. The mountains seemed to swallow us up as we drove into town, and with the high clouds, we couldn't see the tops of them. Our kids went swimming while Kathy and Alex went off to explore town.

The next day, after a morning swim and a bit of clearing of cloudcover, we decided to head up a cog railroad to Montenvers (and I mean UP, straight up), where we had a cheese-filled lunch before riding a gondola halfway down a mountain and then climbing down 300 steps into an ice cave drilled into a glacier.

Yes... the adventure involved: train travel practically straight up a mountain, a gondola ride straight down the other side of the mountain, a precarious walk down hundreds of stairs, and an adventure in an ice cave, which is slowly moving along with the rest of the glacier. It's like they made it just to make kids happy.

The glacier is called Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) and it's the largest glacier in France (the picture to the left is from Wkipedia -- we didn't get that kind of view or blue skies on our trip -- but it shows the wavelike look of the grand glacier). The caves were incredible (and a tiny bit creepy... would they *really* stay up?) and the depth and vastness of the glacier as well as the markers that show how much it has receded in the last decades were awesome in that "awe" sense of the word (versus the Valley Girl sense).

We saw some skiers making their way down the glacier and then back up all of those stairs, despite all of the ice and melting snow. I think John contained his envy quite well -- this is one of the first years in the last 34 or 35 that he hasn't been skiing. I told him we'd come back, just us, to ski and explore more some day. I really hope we do.

After marching back up those 300 stairs (Jack said he counted just 296), we rode the gondola back up the mountain in clouds, had a chocolat chaud in the cafe, and rode the cog railway back down (down, down) the other side of the mountain. Dinner for the kids followed, then one more swim, and the kids were out. That's when John and I found the non-cheesey Japanese restaurant and enjoyed a rare date night.

The next morning gave us our best views of "the mountain", Mont Blanc, which is the highest mountain in the European Union. We could easily have spent the whole day watching parachuters landing outside of our window with the beautiful background of mountains.

We could even see the mountains from the pool . As another aside, Kate and Liv have made huge strides in their swimming during these two April trips we've made... by the last day, both were floating on their own with no life jacket or arm floaties, both were plucking pennies off the floor of the shallow end, and both were jumping into the deep end without holding on to our hands (we were there to catch them, of course... but until now both were nervous about jumping in without a hand to hold on to).

We reluctantly said goodbye to Chamonix at noon, and decided to take a bit of a scenic way home. John plugged some coordinates into the GPS, and at first I thought it was leading us far, far astray, and up a precarious tiny road that seemed to be zigzagging to the summit of Mont Blanc! With complete calm, John just kept driving up and up and up (while my fingers returned to the well-worn grips in the same minivan we rented when his parents were here and we zoomed through the autobahn in Germany) and eventually the road started gradually going down and down, through some of the most beautiful small mountain villages and countryside I have seen.

We stopped for a picnic lunch in a small village along Lac d'Annecy, then went into a cafe for dessert, coffee and bathrooms. (Yes, that is a tattoo of Dora the Explorer on Liv's head. Sometimes you just can't prevent these kinds of things from happening).

A few hours later, and we were "home". We are definitely thinking of this house in Villers-la-Faye as home, and are trying to block out all the thoughts of how hard it will be to leave it in just a few weeks. But they will be good weeks, at least (not that the last weeks and months have been so bad!). The kids will return to school Monday, and my mom and our friend Sharon will come for a visit in late April, and more and more flowers and trees are blooming each day. And the best part of all -- we have no train trips planned for a while!