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?

      

Early Man and Foie Gras

The Dordogne and Perigord Noir is gorgeous!

The Dordogne area

This area is rich in two things that I am keenly interested in: castles and pre-history.  It is also rich in two things that I keenly detest: Foie Gras and walnuts.

Sarlat is a beautiful little community in the area known as the Dordogne or the Perigord Noir.  It has a kind of Harry-Potterish look to it and, although the buildings do not actually lean toward each other they seem like they do. With all the sidewalk cafes and restaurants it looks like “Harry Potter goes to Paris”.  You almost expect a group of young kids to be running around in robes looking for the best deal on les baguette magique and les manche volant.

Sarlat.  It has a fairy-tale/Tim Burton feel to it.

One of the best things about this area is that it is the capital of human prehistory.  The Lascaux cave paintings are here.  For those of you who are not as nerdy as me the Lascaux cave paintings were done by your ancestor Cro-Magnon about 18000 years ago and are one of the few cave paintings done with colour.  The actual cave itself has been sealed up as the presence of you humans and your warm, moist breath has caused some of the paintings to deteriorate.  What they did was to re-create the cave and reproduce the paintings inside.  They call is Lascaux II.  Kind of like Vatican II.  They used the same pigments that Cro-Magnon used and reproduced it to within a centimeter.

The cave paintings at Lascaux

 The amazing thing about Lascaux is that the paintings are done so realistically.  The artist has an amazing grasp of perspective and was able to imbue the paintings with a sense of motion.   When I look at medieval paintings I realize that the artists did not know about perspective (or the church banned it) and the pictures were stiff and frozen.  So who was the mysterious Cro-Magnon artist who painted all those animals on the ceiling of the cave?  Was he a distant relative of Michelangelo?  He had the same modus operandi.

The artwork in the cave was fascinating.   The artist must have been a keen observer of the animals around him (or her).  Not only were the details correct but also the attitude of the animals was realistic – the way they appeared to move and the way they were posed.  Interestingly enough the artist did not paint any reindeer, which were the staple prey of Cro-Magnon.  None of the artwork showed hunting or fighting scenes and the only depiction of a human being was a rudimentary stick figure with what appears to be an erection.  My thought on that is that some Cro-Magnon juvenile delinquent sneaked in and did it.  Darn kids.  I hope his dad tanned his hide for that. 

Prehistoric graffiti?

The pre-history museum is also in the area.   I know, I know: NERDY!  But I still love this stuff.  They had lot of examples of stone tools that were used by both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal both of whom lived in this area.  It showed the evolution over thousands of years of the manufacture of these stone tools.  Some of the work was so incredibly fine and amazing when you consider that their manufacturing tools were rocks. 

No one really knows what Neanderthal looked like.  They know he was short, very robust and had a large nose and a brow-ridge.   Everything else is speculation.   However, they had statues of Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal in the museum.  When Telen saw Neanderthal she blurted out, “He looks like you!”  I thought that was unkind.  What did Neanderthal ever do to her that she needed to insult him like that.

Neanderthal man. Ok, so he has more head hair and is prettier than me but there is some resemblance

Neanderthal man (left) and his less evolved descendant (right)

This area was in dispute for many years between the English and French.  The English laid claim to it through the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry the Second of England.  The French laid claim to it because it was theirs first.  The end result of that is that everyone built castles.   There just under 2000 castles in this area.  Only a few are open to the public – most of them are privately owned.  The owners generally don’t live in them – they are too cold, drafty and uncomfortable.  They tend to live in their other vacation houses on the French Riviera or Monaco.   Imagine having enough money to buy a castle in France just to say that you owned a castle in France.  

A castle in France - yours for a mere 12 million euros.

The original owners did live in them and used them as a base for raiding other castles, levying tolls on the river and generally building up enough capital for their descendants to buy the castle just so they could say they owned a castle in France...

The area of the Dordogne is beautiful.   I did not expect to find a place like this in France. My thought was that France – which has a population at least twice as large as Canada and is only one fourteenth as large as Canada would be crowded with people. This area certainly is not. It is hilly, has large rivers and is covered in forest – essentially wilderness. So far, it is the most beautiful spot we have seen in France.

People still live in these caves...  or maybe not.  But they still use them!

In Sarlat we stayed in a little hotel called “Le Montaigne”.  This translates to “Fawlty Towers” in English.  I kept looking around for Manuel and kept expecting John Cleese to come running out the door to the sound of “BASIL!” echoing in the background.  It was a little family run hotel with Momma and Poppa doing everything: they checked us in, took our baggage up to the room and served us breakfast in the dining room.  I am sure they made up the rooms when we were out.  Their English was atrocious and our French is “atroce” so we got along just fine.

This area is home to Fois Gras and walnuts.  For those of you who do not know how Foie Gras is made it is a simple process.   You force feed ducks or geese with a special high-fat diet until their liver gets infiltrated with fat.  Then you eat the liver.  The liver goes from a nice dark red colour to a pale yellow-brown colour. I don’t know who thought of this but I suspect it is someone who had been pooped on by a goose.  Somehow the idea of eating the liver of a creature that was suffering from steatohepatitis makes me shudder.  Then to top it off with some walnuts…  That has to be the height of masochism.

In Sarlat you cannot find a store that does not sell Foie Gras.  The question is not “Where can I get some Foie Gras?” the question is, “Where can I eat something that isn’t Foie Gras?”  We saw cake with walnuts, gizzard and Foie Gras.  All in the same cake!   It got to the point that when we ordered some ice cream we examined it carefully for oily yellow bits.  They have a specialty here of a sweet cake with walnuts.  All I could taste was bitter.  It was probably cooked in Foie Gras.  Thank goodness Le Montaigne did NOT serve Foie Gras for breaky!

A store specializing in Foie Gras.  Such a rarity in Sarlat.

The idea of Foie Gras made me think.  Maybe McDonalds is like making Foie Gras in human.  Maybe aliens are creating fast food restaurants so that people over-eat until their livers get infiltrated with fat – then they abduct them and eat their livers or maybe just their fat.   If you look at all those people that claim they were abducted by aliens they all look like they eat at McDonalds at lot. 

It is an interesting theory but I am sure it is not true.   If I had uncovered such a scheme I am sure the aliens would find out and quickly put a sto 

Telen writes:

Both Rand and I have been rather disappointed with the French cuisine so far.  After my digestive rebellion to the consumption of cassoulet in Carcassone, a little voice in me warned me to stay away from Foie Gras and various duck confit.  This was not difficult to comply as I have a philosophical stand against the mistreatment of these unfortunate geese and ducks.  I cannot imagine being force fed several times a day, day after day until the liver becomes fatty.  In human terms, this condition is widely witnessed in North America and is called the metabolic syndrome i.e. obesity especially around the middle, diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension.

A new problem arose when in the Dordogne.  What else can we eat?  Our hotel does not offer cooking facilities.  We searched high and low everywhere in town.  It seemed that 95% of the restaurants serve mainly foie gras and duck dishes.  Finally, one night we found a Vietnamese place called the Petit Saigon.  We were so delighted.  Rand eagerly ate part of the Vietnamese spring roll with the Sara Wrap still on until I suggested to him to remove the wrapping first.  Another night we found an Italian joint that served pizza with lots of lettuce on it.  For a moment, I felt quite homesick for Victoria where one finds a huge variety of international cuisines.