Road Trip Day 4: Chenonceau, Chinon and driving a lot

I'm obviously getting further and further behind on this blog as day four of this road trip was a month ago now!  And every weekend since, I've been able to do something pretty cool...so there is even more stuff to blog about and cool pictures to add!  But lots of exams and things are coming too...and there is less than one month left here...I'll do my best to chip away at blogging!

So after our night at my place here in Tours, we decided to visit a couple of the famous castles in the Loire Valley (I blogged a bit about this in October).  First stop was the famous Château Chenonceau.

Oh I had been able to charge my camera at this point!

There were wasp's (?) nests in the tower

Last week in my History of Tours class, we learned more about this castle, so it was neat to apply that to what I had seen a month ago.  Chenonceau represents three phases of architecture: medieval, the beginning of Renaissance which is a mixture of medieval styles too and then official Renaissance style.  The guy who had it built worked for various French kings, so had to earn his social status.  He started building Chenonceau where a fortified castle had been and left a tower from this castle, thus representing the older architectural style.

As you move from the tower into the castle, the style is the mixed one, with Renaissance ideas brought from Italy and implemented for the first time in France.  Things such as a the straight staircase--one of the first in France.

There were gorgeous flower arrangements and tapestries like this everywhere throughout the castle.

We spent ages wandering around this castle, admiring the decor and the fireplaces!

Judy loving the real fire

Mel admiring the velour walls and wood ceiling

And Alanna admiring something in the gallery

Chenonceau is also known as the Ladies Chateau since a few women had a lot of say in its construction over the years.  The original guy's wife had a hand in its design.  He lost ownership to the king to pay off debts and then the next king, Henri II, offered Chenonceau to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers.  She was the one who wanted to add to the castle and commissioned the building of the bridge part over the river (see picture above) and she started the nice gardens.  But when Henri died and his wife, Catherine, became Regent, Diane was kicked out.  Catherine really took the castle over and had more added to it, such as the gallery over top of the bridge, which, being the latest addition, has a different architectural style.  In the first picture above, you can see the sort-of "dormer windows" in the gallery and according to my professor, the further to the left the building goes, the more Renaissance the design is (more decorative for example).


The gardens were really nice too and we had a great time wandering around.

There you can see the original tower and then the castle (left).

From Chenonceau, we drove to the town of Chinon, known for its wine and for its castle.  It is more of a defensive castle, with ramparts and walls, rather than the fancy, country-home type castle that Chenonceau is.  We wandered around, trying to find our way in the walls.  Took some pictures, then agreed to not bother to pay to go inside (having had our share of castle touring--there had been Versailles just a few days earlier too) and considering we had a long drive ahead.

We wanted to get as far south as possible that day, with Bordeaux as the goal, but we were way behind in our time!  But we did it (sadly, our on-the-road dinner left much to be desired.  The girls can attest that French mac and cheese at a service station is not so good)!  And we successfully found a super cheap hotel right off the highway.  Here's a nice artsy pic from the hotel window the next morning.