Château de La Loire

This weekend, 8 of us rented 2 cars and drove a few hours out of Paris to La Loire for some châteeau visits. It was a really, really great (and apreciated) weekend.
At 8h30 Saturday, we met up at Montparnasse to get the cars so we could be on our merry way. Peter was an hour late, and the cars took a while. We ended up leaving Paris by 10h. Brandon was leading his car, and Liisa was nervously tagging behind him. Paz was in Liisa (our) car to calm her down the entire time, and essentially drive for her without actually doing the driving. It was an entertaining experience.
But before any great European roadtrip, we stopped at a Carrefour and picked up carfood and some repas for the trip to save time and cash. We indulged a bit, too.
Our driving directions sucked. Our maps were too general. Instead of taking 2 hours on one road to our first stop, our cars ended up splitting up (which became common and frequent the whole weekend) and getting lost in the middle of France. Liisa commented that most of smalltown France is strangely resemblant of post-war Croatia. I found that many of the smaller, more intimate villages, reminded me a whole lot of the little towns in western Germany and Switzerland. Regardless, we all did several turn arounds, got lost in the "city" Orléans for a long time, and got to the first place about 4 hours later.

~Château de Chambord was like a resort town when you first enter the grounds. It's actually quite pleasant, and we meandered to the ticket counter for the château. The castle itself, made by Francois the 1st around 1518, was massive, dripping with roof ornamentaion, and beautiful. It looked like a cathedral slammed into Versailles and blended the different architectures together. 4 stories high. The inside was vast, clean, but relatively empty. Lots of open space, and little amounts of furniture. I liked it a lot, though; really airy, and I like that in a castle. The main stairwell in the middle was excellent. It was designed probably by someone (if not) like da Vinci, since it was 2 stairwells spiralling around each other. We split up and took our time in the castle, and finally met up on the ground floor to quickly get back to the cars, split up the lunch food, and speed over to the next château an hour away, before they closed.
~Château de Chenonceau was probably our favorite castle for the entire trip. It started with this heavily forested pathway with gardens and mazes on the sides, and a petite village. And the weather was lovely. Then 2 small sphinx statues welcome you to the opening where the castle was settled in between 2 gardens and literally ON the river! There were even openings for boats to pass under the château, like on a bridge. The inside was cozy and well furnished, and the ballroom was absolutely breathtaking, yet simple. True elegance. I'd totally live there. We took our time at this castle, and relaxed in the gardens before they closed up, and it was wonderful.

We split up and found our ways to the town with our hotel, Tours. We thought it'd be a small little village, like the petite towns we drove through. Oh no...Tours is this biggish city in the middle of these castle forts. It was like stepping into Wiesbaden or something. How we ended up finding our hotel in a big city whose map we didn't have, nor knew nothing about, I haven't a clue. But we did, and it was great. Our hotel was a Best Western, and it turned out that our two rooms were massive enough so that only 2 of us in the entire group had to share a bed. It was really nice! We toasted with some red wine for our good fortune.
We went for a latenight stroll around the city and found this little restaurant to eat dinner at. You forget how nice people really are until you get out of the big, dense cities. The people were so wonderful! A bunch of men even moved their own meals to another table so our group of 8 could eat together! The meal was alright, and cheap! I had a fresh salmon.
Honestly, these last two days I have eaten terribly. Junk food in the cars. Rich French food out of the cars. Constantly snacking. I cannot believe the 3 main things in my body were cheese, wine, chocolate, and bread. Welcome to my life as a Frenchwoman. Agh. I am craving a good salad like it's my job.
The old restaurant owner decided to get a bit drunk, and fall in love with our very own Rimi (because she's Japanese). He gave us a free bottle of Champagne, talked with us for over an hour, and hit on Rimi like there was no tomorrow! It was hilarious at first, then it was awkward, then it just got bad. He made Rimi pour the Champagne for everyone (she even called herself a geisha)! We did our best to drink the Champagne quickly so we could get out and relieve Rimi of the awkward, but we still didn't end up leaving until 1am. Crazy old French men...
Peter felt a bit macho, so he tried to carry Alex back to the hotel. He didn't get very far, and we ended up having to console him in his sickness in a park. And we slept fast. Like rocks.
For about 5 or 6 hours. Early rise to get more done.

Don't try driving through Tours very much without a real plan. Just drive out as fast as possible. That is all I have to say about that.
~Azay le Rideau was a pretty palace. Much smaller than the other two we saw. But this one was just a cubed castle completely immersed in the middle of the river. Lovely forest surrounded it, and the water on all four sides made it quite romantic, but it was not our favorite. The rooms were well furnished, though. And the stairwells were completely open, which was very nice. It was a very pretty mansion, but it was small compared to the other castles from the day before. We enjoyed the park around the castle for a while, until it started to look like it might storm.
We took refuge in our cars and drove to a nearby vineyard cave to do some wine tasting.
The woman at the cave was very pleasant, though slightly awkward. We didn't really know what we wanted to do, and the cave owner didn't quite know what to do with us, either. We talked and listened to everything in French. She taught us a lot about tasting and understanding the wine, what and when to drink it, how they make the wine. A very interesting hour with this woman. And the wine was quite good. We bought 2 cases for ourselves. And we left when the sun came back out an hour later.
Lunch in the town by the château was simple, but good. Liisa didn't like it, but I did, so I'm happy with it.
I fell asleep in the car and woke up to us stopping on the side of the road to take pictures of Amboise and its beach town. The other car went on the beach, while our car stayed inside and decided our last destination point.
~Château de Chaumont was very pretty on the outside; a fairytale-like castle on the cliffs of some large hill, and stables on the side. But the insides were being gutted and redone, so the exhibit itself was disappointing. The stables were fun to look at, and the grounds in front of the castle were lovely. But, alas, we got back to the cars and drove.
The trip was nice because Paz had planned most of the logistial stuff perfectly, and we had enough room for interpretation to not stress ourselves out too much. Our conversations were always, if not most of the time. I really enjoyed everyone's company all weekend, and felt like I had found myself a good set of people to be with while in Europe this time around. I dare say I love them all.
The drive back to Paris was a lot faster because we took the toll roads. And we got back to the city around 20h, which meant there was time to get home and do homework after a practically perfect weekend with friends. Too bad I didn't do any work and wrote this instead, huh?