Fontainebleu

My parents made their second trip over to France this year and we decided to hit some of the places that they didn’t see the first time they were here in May, and that I haven’t seen in the year that I have been here. One of the places tops on my list was Fontainebleu. Depending on who you ask, it is either the second or third most-visited chateau behind Versailles. As you have seen if you read the blog much, I love French castles, they happen to be one of my favorite parts of the country. Ridiculous wealth being spent just for the heck of it is absolutely mind-boggling to me, but they did put up some pretty nice buildings surrounded by some beautiful gardens. I have to think that castle building and maintenance was the #1 trade of back-in-the-day. I would have wanted to be the vegetable gardener. You get to be outside, don’t really have to deal with the royalty and if you get hungry, you can just discretely pop a carrot in your mouth. But I digress. On to the castle.
Unlike some of the other castles that I have visited, this one sits right on the road leading into town. In fact, the night before we visited, when my parents picked me up at the train station, we were driving back to the hotel and drove right past it. I saw it and exclaimed “What is that!” Quickly I realized it was the attraction for the next day.
The castle was one of the best I have visited in France (thus the reason so many people go and visit I’m sure). The entry price was reasonable, I think 6.50 or so and we got an audio guide to boot. We went at a great time of the year because there weren’t really any other big groups. There was one, but they were just walking through so we let them pass and continued on with our journey. We saw some spectacular rooms with intricate tapestries and well decorated apartments.
My favorite room in the house was definitely the library. It was in a huge barrel room and had books lining the sides in cases, but had natural light coming in from skylights on the sides of the room. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable sitting room for reading books, as one could probably have a ball in the space it occupied, but I liked the way the room created interest.
The audio tour pointed out an interesting feature of some of the chairs in the rooms with fireplaces. One arm of the chair was lower than the other so that the person sitting in the chair could be exposed to the fire warmth on one side, but guarded from the colder air on the other side. First time I had heard that description in conjunction with furniture.
When we were finished with the castle, which took about an hour, we walked the grounds a little bit. Nowhere near the size they were back when Francois I lived there, there was still ample open space for walking and admiring the colorful fallen leaves. As my dad said, “It must have been good to be king”.