Last weekend, after the mad dash around Nantes with Jess, I left at 7am the next morning to meet with the IES crew to explore Les Chateaux de la Loire, or four of the many castles that line the Loire river. The bus ride was long and mostly during sunrise, which meant sun in our faces, but at least it woke me up enough in time to experience the castles.
Our first stop was Azay-le-Rideau, a relatively small castle tucked into the middle of a little town of winding roads that didn't necessarily facilitate the large bus that we were taking, but our driver managed beautifully. Azay-le-Rideau is mostly characterized by its open, Italian style staircase. It's an Italian staircase because it's one of the early examples in France of a straight staircase with little landings between floors and not just a spiral staircase. The castle is surrounded by water mirrors-- a sort of decorative moat, and mostly park-like gardens. There was a chapel at the back but we weren't allowed in there. Our tour was audio guided and we all wandered through the hallways and skinny staircases and high attics with those little radio devices pressed uncomfortably to our ears. One of the audio track inexplicably held nothing but a Renaissance love poem read by an Irish woman.
Our next stop was the castle, but more importantly the gardens at Villandry. These gardens are perfectly pruned--with square hedges and labyrinths and gorgeous blooms. We tried to get into the castle but we were unfortunately right behind a large group and were directed to the gardens instead. At the tail end of our visit, my group of friends dashed back to the castle and zipped through the rooms in record time, taking a handful of pictures and getting back to the bus early, ready to continue on to Tours.
Tours was where we were sleeping that night, and we had about three hours to explore it between check in and dinner, which we used to exclaim over the Star Wars-esque tram lights, to search for batteries, and to explore a very beautiful cathedral.
The next morning, we popped over to Amboise, where we had a guided tour of the castle and free time in the gardens and the surrounding town. No one had bothered to mention to us that not only did Nantes's favorite, Anne de Bretagne, live in the castle for a period, but that Leonardo da Vinci was casually buried in the tiny chapel.
Our last castle for the weekend was Chenonceau, which I'm pretty sure was the largest of the four. There was the castle, the enormous gardens, the river, the 17th century farm, the labyrinth, the flower garden, and the donkey park. Sydney was most intrigued by the donkey park because she wasn't exactly sure if there were donkeys there. Spoiler alert: the donkeys were there and they were adorable.
This weekend, I stayed in Nantes. This Friday, I headed to the IES center to learn how to make soufflés and then had breakfast on Saturday at Tabl'o Gourmand, which is fast becoming my go-to place for breakfast/snack/coffee/atmosphere. It's just so unhurried and welcoming, with stacks of books and games which give the general idea that you should be in no hurry to leave your table, so just kick back and take your time.
After that, Miel and I walked up alongside tram ligne 3 until we found Place Viarme, where the Nantes flea market is located. This is the sort of flea market mostly full of antiques, shattered bits of violins, old ivory-handled canes, creepy dolls, and boxes of books. Miel and I sifted through boxes of ancient post-cards and I had to be talked out of buying a book on economics because the book happened to be in Greek. As I learned, while haggling in Morocco can be aggressive and harrowing (and haggling in Senegal can be traumatizing), haggling in Nantes consisted mostly of acting skeptical of the price and being hesitant to buy. In the end, I walked away with two old post cards and no books in Greek.
Yesterday I had a cooking class with one of the IES program host families; four students in one little kitchen making a three course lunch. We ended up with goat cheese and sausage and grapefruit-rose wine cocktails for an aperitif, goat cheese samosas for appetizers, then mushroom risotto and sausages for lunch, followed by four types of cheese and then an apple and banana cake. We ate and ate and then talked politics and drank coffee as the host father smoked about five cigarettes in the course of an hour. It all felt very, very French, and I'm going to have to make that cake again.
No comments:
Post a Comment