Tours Day 4 - Chateau de Blois, Chateau de Chambord, returning the rental car at CDG

10/25/2014

Chateau de Chambord

Yay! Angel just helped me reformat all the pictures into larger pictures. I'd been doing in manually, as in one by one. With a little HTML, she did it all with one swoop of a...line? Baby engineer does have some uses. :)

Angel: Lots of uses. Infinite.

As we drove to Chateau de Blois this morning, we passed Chateau d'Amboise, which we visited on the first Chateau day. I was bummed that we couldn't get a view across the river because that's the view everyone associates with d'Amboise. But then as I was driving down the expressway, Angel gave a loud yelp. She grabbed the camera and started snapping away, and it turns out we were on the other side of the river today:

Chateau d'Amboise

Ye-ah! Money shot right there!

Chateau de Chaumont was on our original list of castles to hit. Our original list had 20+ castles in a 3 day period. Yeah, right, like that was ever gonna happen. So before we left, we whittled it down to 3 castles per day, for a total of 9 castles. Then we quickly realized that would not happen on our first day in Tours. Even 2 was a stretch. So Chaumont didn't make the cut. And then...as we drove past d'Amboise a little ways, what do we see but Chaumont. Angel saw it first and snapped this:

Chateau de Chaumont

The first castle of the day was Chateau Royal de Blois:

In 1429, Joan of Arc came to Royal de Blois to get the blessing of an archbishop before she departed with her army to drive the British out of Orleans. There's a plaque remembering her:

There's a chateau pass of 14 different variations--you can pick and choose which castles to include, and it's discounted. We were originally going to do this, but the only tourist offices that sell these passes are not in Tours. They are in de Blois and Chambord, which were the 2 farthest north from our hotel. It made sense to drive to these 2 on the last day, and then drive up to Paris from there, so we didn't get the chateau pass. As it turns out, the tourist office at de Blois was closed today, which makes me feel a little better:

Tours' tourist office does sell advanced tickets to individual chateaus at slightly discounted prices (think 1-2 euro discount). However, these must be purchased 7 days in advance, and we're not sure if you need a French residence in order to purchase them.

Anyway, across from de Blois in the small town square is the House of Magic. They had a little show going on as we walked up into the square, where these giant gold snake heads would poke out the windows:

Chateau Royal de Blois

Joan of Arc statue above the entryway

De Blois is known for their very fancy-schmany staircase. It was considered rather revolutionary to have an outdoor staircase at the time this was built:

The courtyard inside de Blois

What's funny about de Blois is that one-half of the castle is built in red brick, and the other half looks like your standard Loire Valley castle with the blue roofs and white walls:

The first room you enter in the castle is the grand hall:

Love the ceiling!

Where they have these stained glass windows all along the hall:

The porcupine is Louis XII's emblem, and the salamander is Francis I's sign.
Angel: Guess who corrected this bit of information? Moi! Despite all her hours of dawdling and reading every sign in every museum, Jen somehow remembered it as the emblem of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Score 1 for the non-museum-loving people.

You can actually sit on this throne:

This throne was used in some French movies.

We saw another creepy copy of Saint John the Baptist (Angel: again, I found this!):

This is the room Catherine de Medici died in:

Catherine died in 1589, partly due to shock. Her favorite son, King Henry III, and his boon companions invited Henry's rival, Duc de Guise, to his staterooms, where they jumped him and stabbed him. The duc put up a good fight, but died anyway. Right after Henry and his pals committed this assassination, Henry went up to his mother's room and told her, "I'm sorry, Mom. But if I didn't kill him first, he would've killed me." 

There was also a portrait of Antonietta Gonzalez, who had a condition which left her with hair covering her face. Kind of reminds me of Jen always asking, "Do I have hair on my face?"

Jen: That's because my hair's so thin, the wind's always blowing it on my face. Hiss.

Awesome floor tiles. Too bad they're not gold-gold:

Ah, but this is:

Hidden wall paneling

This is King Henry III's bedroom, also the room where he killed the duc of Guise:

A painting of Henry and his pals:

His friends were known as the "minions" (no joke), though it didn't have a negative connotation back then. Henry bucked a lot of court rules and he put more space between him and his courtiers. Previous kings had more intimate relations with their courtiers, partly to keep an eye on any scheming running afoot. But Henry valued his privacy and so he put up barriers. The courtiers didn't like this, as they were used to much more access to the king. As a result, Henry wasn't popular and there were a lot of jokes made behind his back (and a lot of caricatures drawn of him). What the courtiers especially didn't like was Henry's minions, his inner circle of cronies that accompanied him everywhere.

A painting of the assassination of the duc of Guise's brother, a cardinal:

Almost immediately after Henry assassinated the duc of Guise, he ordered the death of the duc of Guise's brother, a cardinal. There's another painting of the Guise brothers' mother, a duchess. She's on her knees in the street, begging Henry to allow her to obtain her sons' remains and Henry has an indifferent look on his face. Indeed, he had her thrown in jail.

This narrow staircase is how the kings would visit their wives at night in the begetting of future kings:

A wine cooler. How neat is that? No idea how they stored wine to cool in that wooden thing:

The brick side of de Blois

At the top of the famous staircase

Intricate carvings on the stair rails. There's the salamander again, for Francis. It adorns a lot of  the castle.

During restoration works, they found this hidden behind several layers in the wall:

As it turns out, this is a painting of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. The original is in Milan. No one knows who painted this copy, but da Vinci was here, so maybe it could be his work? The mural was too badly damaged for restorers to make out who the artist was. As Francis I stayed in the castle too, and he was the one who invited da Vinci to France, I guess it's entirely possible that da Vinci painted another copy here.

Louis XII's porcupine adorns a lot of de Blois as well

We then drove to Chateau de Chambord, the castle that was behind the inspiration for the castle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Originally, Mom, Dad and Angel all wanted to do just 1 castle today, as we still have to drive up to Paris, check into the hotel and return the rental car. Angel was particularly insistent that we go to Chambord:

But I really wanted to go to de Blois and Chambord. And I'm the one driving, so rightly, the decision should lie with me. Muahaha

...although Angel followed me around at de Blois like a little dictator. She'd push me out of one exhibit and into another.

If you come to Chambord, I’d highly recommend an audioguide. The leaflet is good at explaining things, but there’s really too much to cram into a leaflet. Also, as it’s an unguided tour, the time periods were placed very arbitrarily. I kept getting confused which generation of kings we were on. Would have helped if they displayed things chronologically. To really appreciate Chambord, I think you need a full day here. We didn’t get to the church or the gardens. A lot of French people picnic here (it’s a Saturday), and there’s a whole ton of tour buses coming here.

King Franci I ordered the construction of this castle. He never saw it completed, because the scale of it was so mammoth. Subsequent kings have also left their marks here, renovating and redesigning. To this day, it's still not really a truly completed castle, as there are rooms that aren't done. Understandable, considering it has 400+ rooms and 80+ staircases. It's the largest castle in the Loire valley.

courtyard of Chambord

Chambord is known for its double-helix staircase, which was a design of Leonardo da Vinci's. There's two staircases that intertwine, so that you can see across the way into the windows and see other people climbing up or down, but you never have to meet them, as they're not on your staircase.

Windows of the double helix

This hallway is reserved for only the king’s use. There’s another corridor running parallel to it for his courtiers to use…outside in the rain.

The rooftop of Chambord

Rooftop of Chambord, this is where the double-helix staircase ends--nearly 300 steps!

You can imagine the Beast fighting with Gaston up here in the rain

Man, those rooftops are steep!

A drawing of the design of the double-helix staircase:

This is the hall that the king used to visit his queen at night:

I love gild! I'm threatening Angel that I'm going to gild everything, starting with the crown moulding!

King's bedroom:

Chambord also has a carriage exhibit, not in the main building. It was wonderful to see all these beautiful carriages, so ornate and gilded. I want one!

It was getting late, as we were nearing 1/2 hour off schedule. Traffic was congested at some parts, so that added to our problem once we got into Etamps. We were supposed to be here at 5:30pm to fill up on gas and pick up a little dinner, do some last minute shopping. But it was nearing 7pm when we got here. And then, it turns out the E Leclerc gas station doesn't take credit cards that don't have pins. Argh. There was no cashier on duty, so it was impossible to get gas. I've never had that happen before.

So we drove across town to Carrefour, where, thankfully, there was still an attendant on duty:

We got into the station at 6;55pm, and the attendant leaves at 7pm for the night. Yikes. That was too close for comfort! Had we been a few minutes late, we would not have been able to get parking anywhere.

That’s when everything began to go downhill. I guess we paid for it by cramming in the 2 castles on the same day we had to return the car. The traffic into Paris started an hour out of the city—it was horrible!

French quirks of driving we noticed—one-way streets made 2 directions and big arrow/little arrow signs indicate which way has right-of-way. If you're in the lane showing the big car, you have right of lane. If cars are parked on one side of the street, that side of traffic always has to let way for oncoming traffic. On 3 separate occasions, we saw men peeing on the side of the road

.

As we neared Charles de Gaulle, we missed the exit and ended up driving 14 miles up one way and then 14 miles back, as the French don’t have any concept of overshooting, I guess. And because we ended up on the wrong route, we had to pay toll (something we avoided all throughout the NINE days we were driving).

I tried to pump gas at a station near CDG. First the gas door wouldn’t open—finally turns out the car has to be unlocked in order for it to open. While Dad was gassing up throughout the week, the car was always unlocked. How were we supposed to know?!

Then it turns out the station is a prepay station. So I get 4 liters, we fill up…start the engine. Only the sign indicated the tank wasn’t full. But the car wouldn’t take any more gas. So we decide to go inside and top off with another 5 liters of diesel. Paid for it, come back out to pump, and the car still wouldn’t take anymore—it clearly was full, but the meter refused to budge.

So I go back inside (I’m super frustrated at this point). The cashier doesn’t understand that I want a refund, though she’s super nice about it. A guy waiting for his friend speaks French and English (yay!) so he explains the situation to her in English. She nods, and I think she understands. Satisfied that the situation is taken care of, the guy leaves after I thank him. But it turns out the cashier doesn’t really understand. So I try explaining it again, and then another guy is paying for his gas. The cashier asks if he speaks English, and so here I go again, explaining everything to him. He translates it to French for her, and her eyes light up, “Ah, oui!” I get the refund.

Everyone has been super nice to us in France so far. These 2 guys took time out to help me, when they didn't have to. Yesterday, when I tried to gas up and the station wouldn’t accept my credit card, the guy a lane over came over to help. Turns out you need a PIN for an unmanned station, and I didn’t have that kinda card, so no luck on fueling up.

People have helped us with directions and a lot of the cars would stop and let me go first—when I’m walking or driving. That does not happen in America. I’d get flattened to smithereens.

Returning car “voltaires car rental”- there wasn’t an attendant on duty in their 24 hour return zone. So we had to walk several lanes over to find someone to ask where the attendant was.

Then we had to wait 20 minutes for the shuttle to pick us up from the airport to go to our hotel.

Then the hotel key wouldn’t work. This has never happened to me before! The sensor somehow got desensitized, so I had to lug my frustrated, tired ass back downstairs to get a new room key.

Finally! We're in our room! By the time we get in, it's 11:30pm. We were supposed to be here around 7:30pm :T

To look on the bright side, it was pouring rain when we left the covered garage this morning in Tours. By the time we arrived in de Blois, it was sunny. And remained clear--if not sunny--the whole livelong day. So thank God for good weather!