Interlude

After leaving mass at Chartres, my parents and I drove to a little town called Blois on the Loire River. I had quickly visited this city earlier in the year, but it looked so cute I wanted to come back. I failed to mention to Mother Nature that I wanted to return with sunny and decently bearable weather. She failed miserably. It was raining and chilly, but we braved on. Following Rick Steves' guide we headed to a little restaurant at the base of the chateau...that was closed. Instead we walked through the pretty Sunday-deserted town and found our way to a little restaurant open for business. My dad had cassoulet, which I had thought was a cheesy potato dish like the one I had on my birthday, but really cassoulet is a dish with sausage and beans and, as I found out the following week, duck. We enjoyed our meal and off we went to Chambord.

I have visited Chambord before on my day of chateaux, but as it is a massively-huge place and pretty famous, Mom and Dad wanted to check it out. It was on our way from Chartres to Clermont-Ferrand so we made the quick stop. As was with Fontainebleu, the sheer wealth of the castles of the royalty back in the day is just astonishing. One of the features of Chambord is that there is a fireplace for every day of the year. The neat part about this trip is there were actually fires in some of the fireplaces! This castle is nowhere near as decorated as most are, but mostly because it has so many rooms. Also, this castle was just a hunting castle for the king, so all of the furniture was mobile. When he wanted to come, his people were sent along ahead of time to put in the furniture, when he wanted to go elsewhere, they packed it all up and sent it along before him. Interestingly this castle fell into ruin and as the years went on and people died it was literally gifted away because the swamps it was built on contributed to horrible mosquito infestations in the summer and the area of France where it is located is prone to horrible winters. Eventually it was unlived in for a while until someone "stumbled" across it while hunting and, as a piece of royal property, it was once again gifted to someone who was willing to invest even more money and energy into the place. The state of France bought it in the early 1900s and turned it into a tourist attraction and money-making machine. Well, congratulations, you got me twice and it was worth it both times.