Les Châteaux

Amboise is all about les Chateaus.

 

Le Château de Amboise

A Chateau is like a castle made by someone who believes in comfort.  Unlike castles, which are made for protection, Chateaus are the architectural version of strutting your stuff on the Promenade Anglais.  They are built in a grand style often with large manicured gardens and are often placed on a hill to better be seen.  In human terms they are the girl in the low cut dress with the incredibly high heels swinging her hips and flipping her hair as she walks across the room. Attention getting- oh indeed!  Functional?  Not so much. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against either the women or the Chateaus acting in this manner.  In fact in both cases I enjoy admiring the architecture, the details, the foliage and all the decorations.  I am just not sure what they are for.

I suspect status has something to do with it. 

In Greek and Roman mythology the goddess of love, Aphrodite (or Venus if you are Roman) is married to Ares (Mars) the god of war.  I think the Greeks got it right.  War is caused by lust – or at least the two are intertwined.  Most wars are caused by men seeking status or power over others.  Young men go off to war with the idea of becoming heroes – which, of course imparts status.  Why the status?  The higher the status, the more women are available to you. Lust and War…

So if you have enough money to build a Chateau you can show off all that status. You can have that girl with the low-cut dress both figuratively and actually.

The Chateau at Amboise was the French Royal Palace for a while.  Things were not going well in Paris what with the English taking land and strutting their status so the French King moved his family and retinue to Amboise.  The king, of course, needs a Palace so they built the Chateau Amboise.  It is impressive with all the various rooms and immaculate garden but I wouldn’t want to live there.  I am not sure I have any real use for guardrooms, stables, sentinel towers or chapels.   Somehow it just doesn’t feel cozy.   And then there are those tourists wandering around – you probably couldn’t find a quiet place to read unless you were sitting on the toilet.

Telen listening to the King's throne in the Chateau de Amboise

Amboise is in the Loire Valley.  The Loire River runs right through the town and right now it is feeling a bit bloated.  It is called the last untamed river in France because it does not have any dams on it and so it has a tendency to overrun its banks.  Kind of like the nobility – no spending controls so a tendency to overrun their banks…   (groan)  Since this has been one of the wettest springs in Europe in recent memory the Loire is very full and very close to top of its banks.  Since the area is dead flat if the Loire flooded this area would become the Loire Lake and/or the Loire Swamp.

The Loire River pushing the envelope

Since the Loire Valley is dead flat, lush and filled with fancy Chateaus it is a Mecca for cyclists.  Cycling through the Loire would not be a challenge since there are no hills.  It would be like cycling across the prairies only with more trees and less wind.  We saw many cycling tours and cycling groups going through Amboise.  Some of the cyclists looked like they could barely walk but they could cycle in the Loire.  We saw a family ride by with all their bikes fully loaded.  The smallest member of the family was a little girl who was probably only 8 years old and weighed 30 kg but she was pumping along with a fully loaded bike that probably weighed twice what she did.  Good for her!

There was this little know-it-all Italian named Lenny from Vinci who lived his final years there.  Things were falling apart in Rome so at the behest of King Francis the first (alias Francis the nose) Lenny hopped on a mule and rode over the Alps to France and Amboise. He brought with him a few of his favourite paintings including one of a girl named Mona.  He lived in Amboise until he died at age 64. and was buried in the chapel at the Chateau Amboise. 

Mona, Telen and Me

I have always been a great admirer of Leonardo and it was very cool to see where he was buried.  His final years were spent at a small Chateau, called Clos Luce, not far from the then Royal Palace.  It is open to tourists so we walked around and saw where he slept, where he ate, where he painted and a large exhibition of his engineering works. 

Where Lenny hangs out now

The amazing thing about Leonardo is that he came up with so many ideas – most of which didn’t work.  His flying machines didn’t work, his parachute didn’t work, his submarine didn’t work, and his water-walking shoes didn’t work.   I can do that!  In fact, I am better than Lenny because some of his ideas worked.  I have a perfect record – none of my ideas works.  Ok, in his case he was underwhelmed by the technology of the day – in my case the ideas are just plain hair-brained.

Lenny and me (I am on the left)

One of the things I truly enjoyed about Amboise was the ability to sit in the plaza and have coffee next to the tower where Leonard da Vinci was buried.  How often do you get that opportunity in your lifetime?  So far in our European trip we have encountered Michelangelo, Raphael, and now Leonardo Da Vinci.  These are the big three of the Renaissance.  Not only that but we have trod in the footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh and seen the works of Rodin. 

Lenny is up there in the chapel at the top of the tower

Telen writes:

Our stay in Amboise is highlighted with one of the warmest welcome we have received so far in Europe.  Our host from the B & B named Philippe came to greet us at the train station.  His wife Maria greeted us at the house with big smiles and the “French kiss” i.e. cheek kiss on one side then the other!  Since our arrival was on a Sunday and late in the evening about 8 pm, they offered us supper of quiche Lorraine and wine.  Maria told us that the local grocery had closed so she had stocked our fridge with milk, juice, jam, eggs and bread to get us started.  We were stunned by such thoughtfulness and hospitality.  Philippe is a specialist and educator in interior decoration so our studio was indeed tres chic.  After dinner, our host invited us to their living room to have tea and coffee.  It turned out that they enjoy travelling just as much as we do.  Maria is of Vietnamese by descent and speaks perfect French.  Yet, one of the photos of her during their travel to Yemen made her looking like a terrorist - her hair in a crew cut holding a machine gun.  Apparently travelling in Yemen is best done with armed guides.

Our culinary selection in the Loire valley has improved a lot.  Foie gras no longer dominates the menus.  The hardest thing here is to resist the attractive displays in the patisseries, which seem to be everywhere.

When the rich lived in the Chateaus the poor lived in these houses dug into the sides of hills

Rand blithers:

Which reminds me:

Our arrival in Amboise was interesting.  Our host, Philippe, came to the train station to meet us and take us to his B&B.  He met a man at the train station who he mistook for me and greeted him.  This man had arrived to see a friend that he had met on the Internet but had not actually met.  So the two of them went to Philippe’s place and were sitting having a glass of wine when Philippe asked the man where his wife was.  The man answered that he did not have a wife.  At that point Philippe twigged in to the fact that there may have been a double case of mistaken identity and hustled off to the train station where Telen and I were wandering around trying to figure out how to get to the B&B.  When we got to the B&B the man was still there and had drunk quite a bit of Philippe’s wine and smoked quite a few of his cigarettes.  He then invited himself for dinner.  This man was shabby, had long shaggy hair, glasses, and looked like he might have a few addiction problems.  When I looked at him I thought that the only resemblance to me was that his beard was white.  If it hadn’t been so funny I might have been insulted.  It was a couple of hours later that he staggered out into the street in search of his friend.  How weird is that?