Click here for the route for day 3.

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Today we decide to be a tad ambitious. It’s our last day at the Loire and there are 3 more Castles we really want to see. “Chateaux d’Usse”, the “Clos Luce” and “Chenonceaux”.

Chateaux d’Usse

Chateaux d’Usse is a beautifully romantic castle that looks like it bounced off of a fairytale. And it turns out this is no coincidence. In fact the castles in fairy-tales are probably based on this castle. Legend goes that the writer of the story of “Sleeping Beauty” visited the castle and was inspired by its surroundings. The private owners of this castle decorated the top floor of the east-wing of this castle with wax figures portraying the story of sleeping beauty. What sounded like a ghastly commercial attempt turned out to be a very nicely done and welcome change of scenery to capture the children’s imagination. And as most of the other quarters were decorated with authentic furnishings, and contrary to most other castles, solely with furniture that actually resided in this castle at the time, the impact to even the most puristic historians remains minimal.

Clos Lucé

Chenonceaux

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Klik hier voor nederlandse tekst.

Our route for the day.

Blois

Today we start with the “Châteaux de Blois”. Katrien tells the girls about the different architectural styles of the Castle. (Gothic, Renaissance, Flamboyant, and classisistic) and how they were built centuries apart.

Mariken guesses which style is the oldest and newest and starts taking pictures of the parts she liked best. When she wants to take a picture of the kings throne, she drops the camera and it as it hits the floor it rolls all the way up to the throne and hits the foot of the pretty years old piece of furniture. As security comes barging in an official already moved in to recover the camera. Mariken now promises to keep the camera-strap attached to her arm at all times.

After our visit we have pancakes with ham and cheese on the town square, with a nice view of the castle.

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Chambord

After Lunch we drive off to Chambord. Such an impressive castle! Amazingly this gigantic castle with 440 rooms that took over 20 years to build was never intended as a royal residence. Or any residence for that matter. It was a “hunting lodge” because of the remote location and gigantic size, living their was just to impractical. King François I barely spent 7 weeks in the castle, and each time it took a major logistical exercise to move all the furnishings to the totally bare castle each time the king visited. The sole purpose of the castle seems to have been to impress and show off wealth and power. Upon arrival it was clear that the castle achieves this purpose with great success.

We start our visit by climbing the double helix staircase. Though the fact that it was designed by Leonardo Da Vinci is not considered proven it is clear that Leonardo’s genius is interwoven with this and many other aspects of the castle. The almost futuristic modular design of the castle has a aire of modern hotel- or apartment-buildings. Each corner of the central “donjon” is an almost identical “apartment”.

Na ons bezoek rusten we nog even uit in de tuin van het paleis. Na een kleine picknick, een dagdroom over de inrichting van ons paleis, een walgelijk duur ijsje (€2 per bol) is het stilaan tijd om de dag weer af te sluiten.

Het slapengaan verloopt al een pak vlotter en Tim en Katrien kunnen zelfs nog een aflevering van 24 meepikken terwijl de kindjes in dromenland vertoeven.

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Voor Nederlands klik hier

This morning we left for a 5 hour drive to the Loire valley. At least we thought it would be a 5 hours drive, but we forgot to count the almost limitless amount of stops required for visits to “the little girl’s rooms”. So after about 6 and a half hours we approached our destination.

We decided to go directly for a visit of Azay-Le-Rideau instead of going to the Hotel first.

Mariken, felt strongly that she should have her own camera and should take pictures herself, so Tim gave her the smaller camera to start with.

Mariken got the hang of it pretty quickly. She enjoyed taking pictures of the beautiful castle and made sure her daddy was in the picture a couple of times. Mariken and Liselore were very impressed by the decorated steps and the Kings chamber, but they did feel that the inside of the castle was quite dark.

We explained that the castle originally belonged to the mayor but that the castle was so beautiful that the King became jealous of its beauty and took it for himself. It’s not entirely historically accurate, but it is said that the confiscation of the castle by the King was based on trumped up charges of embezzlement towards the Mayor who was also state treasurer, and that the castle had something to do with that. We decided to spare Mariken (4 years old) and Liselore (2 years old) the political details of 16th century France, and stuck to our shortened version of the facts.

After our visit we went on to check-in to the Hotel and finished off the day at quite a nice Pizza and Grill place. We were in luck, because the first Thursday of every month they have live music in the restaurant and Mariken and Liselore enjoyed watching the musicians while Tim and Katrien finished their dinner.

The kids were a bit overstimulated after that, and it took some time to get them to sleep.

Same day from Mariken’s viewpoint… (Dutch language only)

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