The Lovely Loire

The Loire is such a lovely part of the country. By now, we've been to many parts of France and I have to say that the Loire is my favorite. This is our fourth trip to the area and I can envision returning a few more times.

I am totally fascinated with the caves. When we visited the Dordogne a few years ago, we came across caves that were high up on the cliffs, seemingly difficult to reach. They were at that point just empty holes in the rock, carved out by ancient people called Troglodytes (literally, "cave dwellers"). I had a hard time figuring out just who those people were, when they lived, etc.

Then a couple of years ago, we went to a town in Italy called Mattera that is famous for its caves -- a whole ancient town of cave houses, churches and probably markets as well.

So, one draw for me in Amboise, our apartment town, is the caves. In my last post, I showed this photo of modern cave houses, which from their front porches look just like any other houses. Their difference is that they are carved out from the rather soft rock called Tufa, which is a type of limestone, and often have typical fronts put on them. If you are viewing from a passing view, you might not notice that they are caves.

So, I was happy when our friend, Beate, suggested that we go to lunch at a cave in a tiny village a few miles away on Friday.

It's a little hard to tell, but this is a restaurant in a cave. As we drove to it, I noticed that there were several cave restaurants along the way. It was very interesting to be inside. Other than the irregular ceiling, and lack of windows, it could have been anywhere. It didn't have that damp feeling you might expect. It wasn't like a spelunking; it was just like any restaurant. I suspect that during the summer, they don't need any air conditioning because the temperature should be a rather even 60F (or so) all of the time. It was an interesting adventure, the food was delicious, and I'm so glad that she suggested going there.

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November 3

The following day, Saturday, Beate joined us for a trip to the Chateau d' Usse', better known to little girls everywhere as Sleeping Beauty's castle. 

This handsome chap was Charles Perrault, the author who developed an entirely new genre of literature called Fairy Tales. 

photo: Wikipedia

And this castle, Chateau d' Usse', was his inspiration. He was born to a wealthy family and was well educated and held high administrative appointments in the government. In his older years, he lost his appointment (he must have fallen out of favor) and took up writing down and embellishing folk tales for his grandchildren. Among his stories, called "Fairy Tales", were many that are still very familiar to children today:

Little Red Riding Hood

Sleeping Beauty

Tales of Mother Goose

Cinderella

Bluebeard

Puss in Boots 

Most of these stories are told today almost exactly the way that he wrote them in the late 1690s. A little more than 100 years later, the Grimm brothers in Germany became famous for rewriting many of these tales.

The grounds of the Chateau were very nicely landscaped.

Here's a couple more shots of the exterior of the Chateau.

All I can say is "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair". (Written by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812.)

Inside of the Chateau, several rooms had manikins portraying parts of the story of Sleeping Beauty. This one is the part where she is left in the castle by her parents while they went somewhere and she is enticed to spin when she pricks her finger and falls into a one hundred year sleep. 

We were here on the last weekend of a two week school vacation, so there were quite a few kids there. We encountered several little girls dressed in their finest princess costumes for the occasion. Because it seem very rude and pushy, I did not try to take a photo of any of the little girls, but trust me that they were very cute. There were princess dresses on sale in the gift shop for a mere 149E -- that's about $175USD. YIKES!!!

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On the way back to Amboise, we stopped at a winery in Vouvray, a very famous wine district in the Loire that specializes in sparkling whites. The owner of the winery is a friend of Beate's so we were treated to a private tour of the cave de vin where the bottles are stacked and stored for several years.

The signs on each stack of bottles indicates the year that they were put down and the number of bottles. In this case, there were 27,000 bottles in this nook of the cave and the wine was bottled in 2016. I couldn't even calculate how many total bottles were in the cave. I'm going to take a rough guess and say maybe 1.5 - 2 million. Some bottles had been there for 30 years and more. I had no idea that white wines could be kept for that long; especially sparkling whites. 

Here is a look down the long corridor. At each arch there was a nook that could hold anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 bottles.

These wines caves are just another example of how the people of the area have made good use of this soft rock. It is so soft that it can be dug out with just simple hand tools.

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Saturday was a packed day for us. After our excursion to the Fairy Tale castle and the wine cave, we had time for a rest and dinner at our apartment before going to a concert just around the corner from our apartment at the theater.

The concert was very interesting. It was a group of 11 singers who sang a high energy combination of American gospel and soul music. There were several elements of this group that were odd. First, when one thinks of gospel music, one automatically thinks of black women because they are the ones carrying on the tradition of black, southern gospel music. Well, to my surprise, they were all white and when the lead singer began to talk to the audience, she spoke perfect French. So, I thought it strange that she was from America and spoke French, yet sang in English.  

It turns out that they are a local group and they sing in English because that is the language of gospel and soul music. France does not have a similar type of music. Further, I didn't understand that they were all simply performers. I thought, because the emphasis was on gospel, that the lead male singer was an evangelical pastor and that the lead female singer was his wife, as in a popular style in America where the husband and wife pastor together as a couple. Man, was I wrong. Well, it made for a good story anyway. I reminded myself that one should never assume.

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November 4

On Sunday, we drove to the Chateau Blois which we missed last year when we were in Amboise. It was about a 45 minute easy drive from Amboise. It wasn't the nicest day, but when you are inside, it doesn't really matter that much about the weather and at least it wasn't raining.

The Chateau at Blois is no longer used although it is in very good condition. The castle was enlarged a few times as it passed through many hands through the centuries. Consequently, it had a variety of architectural styles, from Gothic to Renaissance to Classical. 

At the beginning of our tour we saw these lovely stained glass windows showing the porcupine which was the symbol of one of the kings who made a home here.

France has had a lot of kings and they all seemed to have many places of residence.

In trying to follow the line of kings of France, I got rather mixed up until I realized that until the 1600s or thereabouts, there were several kings at the same time because France was not united at that time. Each area seemed to have its own monarch. So that would explain why there were so many kings and that they had so many chateaux. I am not nearly as well versed in French history as I am in English history.

One of the reasons that I was interested in visiting this Chateau was that there was a costume exhibit going on now. In actuality, the display was not what I had anticipated. It wasn't documented in any way, so that it didn't dawn on me that the costumes that I saw along the tour route were what I had come to see. I guess that I was expecting some explanation of the costumes, but there was absolutely none. I was expecting original costumes, but these were newly made according to period designs. No wonder that they were in such good condition! Here is but one of the costumes on display:

It wasn't very evident at first, but the costumes changed with the periods. I didn't quite catch on until I got to the rooms that were reflecting the last owners in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of them.

The Chateau had undergone extensive renovation under the last owner, so some of the rooms had very bright colors to them. This "throne" was set up in the old part of the Chateau in the great hall with a sign inviting people to sit on it. How very un-French!

The ceiling in the room was quite splendidly painted. Who knows if the original was quite so colorful.

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November 5

Monday was our last day in Amboise (sigh!). We went to a completely different Chateau in Loches. After practicing many, many times, I finally can say the name of the town properly: I just think "lawsch" and that about approximates the right way to say it.

French is always a difficulty for us. When it is written out, we can more or less figure out the gist of the text (given enough time), but spoken French is totally beyond our comprehension. To save myself an enormous amount of embarrassment, I never try to say anything in French, with the exception of "Comment dites vous?", or "how do you say?". So, my endless practicing of "Loches" was unusual.

The town of Loches was interesting and I wish that we had had more time to explore. The chateau was not exactly in ruins, but it had not been used in a very long time, evidently.

There was a very lovely chapel which was probably 14th century with wonderful stained glass windows.

This is the oldest part of the chateau, the keep, or in French, the donjon.

It is a huge, impressive and intimidating building. An invader would have to think twice about attacking this edifice.

At the opposite end of the original wall was the residence. Like so many ancient buildings, it had been added to and improved with subsequent owners, as you can see in this photo.

The church had these strange pyramids on the roof. There was nothing in the brochure that described their purpose, although it did say that they were accessible via an internal staircase. 

There was evidence that the church had also been increased in size with subsequent owners in different centuries. It had two bell towers, one of which had visible ropes indicating that the bells might still be there.


It appeared that there might have been only about a dozen people in the entire compound on this day. If I had wanted people in my photos, I would have had to wait around for someone to show up.

It was clear that no one had lived here in a long time (about a century). Well, that is, there are homes in the walled compound where people live, but not in the castle or the keep. I suspect that most of the residences are gite rentals.

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On Monday evening, we invited Beate for dinner at our apartment and had a wonderful evening on our last night in Loire. We look forward to seeing her again next time.

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In the morning it would be time to pack up and drive about 200 miles or more to our next apartment in Bordeaux. More about that next time.