Amboise

Last weekend I went up to the Loire Valley again to hang with friends from the States. We started with a lovely dinner in Tours, and then made our way to our chateau for a good night's rest. Yes, you read that right. This is a reason I love traveling with parents, not mine only, but the family I was traveling with is close enough to family, that these parents count for their ability to spoil me rotten on a weekend with them. Our chateau was pretty cool and made me wonder who buys a chateau and turns it into a hotel. I mean it isn't like you just renovate a little bit. Chateaus are made of stone, this place was sheetrocked all over the place. It took some serious bills and some serious work, but the place was really cool.
We spent Saturday in a little town called Amboise. One of the great things about the day was that we had no "destination". We kind of just went with the flow of the day, which led us to have "the best hot chocolate ever" at 11am followed by eclairs all around. Fabulous way to start the day. We walked up to Da Vinci's house and just glimpsed at the outside before heading back for a mega-chocolate indulgence. We went to see how Bigot makes its chocolates, but didn't really get a demonstration of that, rather we ate 6 different kinds of chocolates and I was full to the brim of the stuff. It was all so yummy, but I had to take a little break on the chocolate for a while. We tasted some wines and decided they weren't to our liking, so we made our way to another little town to tour a cave and taste some more wines. It was all quite fun!

Back in Amboise for the evening, we grabbed a bottle of our wine and some bread and took a little break by the Loire and watched the sun lower in the sky while we enjoyed being in France. We had dinner at a great French place that had the biggest menu I have ever seen in France and also had the biggest bowl of chocolate mousse for dessert that I could possibly have desired. Get this. I didn't finish it. We made it back to the chateau early because Sunday was a travel day. We had to say good bye to a fellow traveler. I was dropped off in Clermont by the parents and left jealous that they had another week in the south of France.