Château Chenonceau

If you are not sick of French castles, then you probably will be soon enough if you keep reading the next few posts. It seems that every time you turn around in the Loire valley you stumble over some dead duke's mansion. We stopped at or drove past châteaux in Beaugency, Tours, Blois, and Amboise. It's pretty bad when you've become so overloaded that a 10 second glimpse from a moving car is enough to satisfy.

Chenonceau, though, was well worthy of a stop then and a few words now. It is not nearly as big as Chambord but it has a fairy tale quality to it that my girls loved. First, it is surrounded by picture-perfect gardens laid out like geometry homework. You can picture royal couples walking and playing games of courtly love. Second, it is built straddling the Loire river and creates a romantic vison of royal couples raising the drawbridges to protect their privacy. Third, the dominating personalities in the history of Chenonceau were mostly women. (One of whom was Catherine de' Medici who made a great name for herself by ruling France as regent, starting wars, and poisoning people she didn't like. She did, however, love good food...and for that quality the French will apparently forgive anything.) We spent the morning at Chambord and then drove to Chenonceau for a late lunch and the afternoon. From there, we unfurled the sails and turned the bow toward the North East and Versailles.