Chateau Over Troubled Waters

We heard today that the new Socialist government in France is making the stockmarket and World currencies nervous.  Ah well, we’re still on our holiday…..

The sun shone again so we got the bicycles off the back rack and cycled along to the Chateau de Chenonceau with sun tan lotion on our noses and bottles of water in the back pack.

We wandered around Diane de Poitiers garden; she was apparently King Henri II’s lover and he gave her the Chateau.  Hmmm, must find myself a rich King with a spare chateaux…..

We then toured the interior of the chateau marvelling at the age of everything there and admiring the most beautiful flower displays.  Two florists are employed full time in one of the farm buildings to create the interior displays and ‘assure’ them daily; I think they meant refresh them daily, otherwise there’s an awful lot of talking to the plants going on in there…..!

The gallery was a lovely room used as a ballroom by Catherine de Medici when she lived there.  It is the long room that she had built above the bridge over the river.  It’s long and narrow with windows both sides and fireplaces at both ends; it would be great to have a big party there.

As it was now lunchtime, we popped into the café next to the Marques Tower for lunch and ate it outside in the sunshine; another first.  Then after that we strolled around Catherine de Medici’s slightly smaller garden, the 16^th century farm, the vegetable and the flower gardens before heading over to the maze.  We love a good maze, but this one was disappointingly easy; four entries and every one led almost straight to the centre!  Ok Rodney, you still got there before me…..

Back on our bikes we cycled through the village that seemed to comprise of one hotel with a restaurant, one boulangerie and nothing else. So we carried on over the bridge to the opposite side of the River Cher (singing ‘Turn Back Time’ as we peddled along), then up a very muddy lane to find another beautiful view of the chateau.

The rest of the day was spent with Rodney trying to straighten up his bike wheel a bit more so that he can use top gear again and me doing a bit of hand washing and hanging it up in the sunshine. We’re now snuggled back in Eileen with small rain drops outside and Rodney is reading all about the global financial crisis from the point of view of Paul Mason and I’m blogging away and enjoying looking at all of our photos.  What will tomorrow bring, I wonder?