Here we are with our niece Leigh outside the Château d’Amboise

Our second stop in the Loire Valley was Amboise, right on the river. Today it’s a cute, quiet, and quaint town of perhaps 14,000 people but it was once the home of the French royal court, particularly under Francis I. Mary, Queen of Scots, grew up here, as did Charles VIII of France who ruled from 1483 until his death in 1498 (from hitting his head on the lintel of a door here!). And no less than Leonardo da Vinci spent the last few years of his life here, welcomed by Francis I who put the great Renaissance mind up at a manor house just a very short walk from his Château.

We had a lovely and modestly lazy visit here. Actually, for me and Mark it wasn’t particularly lazy at all; we’ve gotten pretty good at taking our tourist stops easy. This was our brief visit with Mark’s sister Jeanne and her family, though, and they’d been pretty aggressive with their time in Paris and Normandy, so for them it was a bit of a break. In all there were three major things to see in Amboise:

1. Clos Lucé was Leonardo da Vinci’s official residence for the last three years of his life, from 1516 to 1519; it is believed that he finished the Mona Lisa here. Today it is a museum with period furniture in a bunch of rooms open for tour and, more interesting for most, a lot of his inventions on display. I have to admit, it wasn’t really for me. Presumably I just don’t have enough of a scientific, mechanical, or engineering bent to appreciate it. It’s really popular, though, and lots of other people love it so my relative boredom probably has more to do with me than with the actual merits of the property itself.

2. Château d’Amboise, just a few hundred yards from Clos Lucé and connected by an underground tunnel, was a favored royal residence during much of the 15th and 16th centuries. I loved touring the Château and found the scale far more comfortable than some of the huge castles we’ve seen. And – this is big – Leonardo da Vinci is buried here in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert. With this visit, Mark has now seen the burial places of all four Ninja Turtles (Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello). How many people can say that??

3. Finally, the Château de Chenonceau is just a few miles up the road from Amboise. Spanning the River Cher (contrary to common belief, the river was not named for the great American chanteuse of the same name) the Château is one of the most famous in the Loire Valley. I love part of the history. When Henry II inherited the crown from Francis I (da Vinci’s patron), he gave the Château to his favorite mistress Diane de Poitiers, a woman 20 years his senior. She laid beautiful gardens and built the part of the building that spans the river but, when Henry died from a wound incurred during a jousting match his widow Catherine de Medici, who’d never really taken to her husband’s mistress, wasted no time in evicting poor Diane. Catherine then laid out her own gardens and to this day there are competing gardens to stroll through. Those crazy Medicis!

Beyond those were the big attractions in Amboise we discovered a fabulous little restaurant, Chez Bruno, directly across from the Château d’Amboise in a touristy area where you just wouldn’t expect great quality. It was good enough, though, that we had lunch there twice and dinner once in our three-night stop. And a great bar/café across the river where we could have Negronis while admiring an evening view of the Château That, and of course the chance to visit with the various El Hindis made it a great stop.

The Château, while sitting having cocktails across the river

From here the plan was to return the car in Paris and fly to Ireland for our last 12 days in Europe. Over the last few weeks, though, instead of researching what we wanted to do in Ireland and where we wanted to go, we were having fun with the Germains in Italy. Not until Amboise did we realize that we had no plans, no reservations, nothing for Ireland. We discovered the country was kind of booked up so at the last minute – literally the day before we were supposed to go there – we canceled our flight and decided to stay in France. Our flight back to the States was supposed to go from Dublin to Paris and then on to Minneapolis, so we just canceled the Dublin-Paris leg and will fly directly from Paris.

How’s that for spontaneous? In a perfect world we would have extended our car rental for a few days and driven to Normandy before heading to Paris but in case you haven’t noticed this is not a perfect world. Good, but not perfect. We were unable to talk to anyone who could extend our car rental without first returning it to Charles de Gaulle airport, so instead we just decided to return the damned thing and spend a few days in Paris. How bad could that be?

Leigh, as though she were being held captive in the castle

Here we are with the El Hindis: Mark, Jeanne, me, Leigh, Jamal, and Jamal

Me & Jeanne

The Château de Chenonceau spanning the River Cher

Me & Leigh inside a maze in the Château de Chenonceau. It’s not quite so difficult when you can see over the hedge….

Mark and Jeanne at the Château d’Amboise

The Château d’Amboise on its own

One more shot of that château reflecting in the Loire

And the two traveloholics enjoying Amboise

The Château L’Épinay at sunrise. A pretty nice place to settle for a few days

Yup, we went to Saint Georges. From Rome we wanted to go up to the Loire Valley to meet Mark’s sister Jeanne and her family, taking a summer vacation stopping in a few places around France. The way the schedule worked we were going to have a few days on our own before meeting them in Amboise. We were making reservations pretty late, when most nice places were full, so we used the TripAdvisor map function and just poked around in the area till we found something we liked. When I saw a great old château in Saint-Georges-sur-Loire it seemed like a no-brainer. So we flew to Paris (on a Spanish airline called Vueling that had absolutely the least leg room ever seen on a plane until we relocated to exit row seats just before takeoff), rented a car, and headed south.

As an aside we’re amazed by modern cars, where you don’t have to insert a key, where you pair your iPhone and then it just plays your music, where the side mirrors automatically tuck in when you lock the doors, and where they have built-in navigation systems that the rental company asks if you want to pay for and when you decline … it’s just there anyway. Of course, when I realize we haven’t bought a car since 1995 – over 20 years! – I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that they’ve gotten fancier.

Oh yeah, and there was the lunch break we had on the highway down toward the Loire. The best food you’ve ever had at a rest area. And wine! I was driving and resisted the temptation but from the looks of things a lot of other drivers thought it was pretty normal to enjoy a little wine with lunch. It’s been a long time since we drove on a U.S. Interstate but I have this sneaking suspicion they don’t serve beer and wine at the rest areas.

Once we got to Saint-Georges-sur-Loire we stayed at Château L’Épinay, a beautiful old property dating primarily from the 16th and 18th centuries out on a tiny road a few miles from the small town. It had a lot of land, with a tennis court, swimming pool, rose garden, restaurant, spa and workout room, pond, horses, bikes … you name it. We were way out in the country and it was beautiful.

Dinner at the Château L’Épinay looks like the good life

The food was pretty much exceptional

Of course, way out also means kind of isolated; getting anywhere for meals meant getting in the car and driving, something we hate doing. So we had dinner the first two nights on site, only to realize that the third night was Sunday when pretty much everything else within 20 miles was closed. So we had dinner the third night, too; by now the menu (with the same “specials” from the first two nights) was getting a little old.

What else? At various times we were walking, running, and biking around the area and one of the odd things we observed was that there was a lot more corn and hay around than vineyards. I think of the Loire Valley as home to great wine and while I know you can’t live by wine alone (you need rum and vodka, too…) I was just surprised to see the fields full of corn instead.

A quiet, isolated pond just a mile or so from our château … with no mosquitoes

And then at one point I was on a nice walk out along tiny roads – all paved, of course; no matter how small they are it seems that all French lanes are paved – and came to a quiet, remote pond. Lily pads and all that. And while I sat there to read for a while it occurred to me “Hey, there are no mosquitoes here.” I never could figure it out; if there was anywhere mosquitoes should flourish it would be at that still body of water in August, but none at all. And this was far enough out in the country it couldn’t be the result of spraying. One way or another, though, no mosquitoes. Another reason to love the Loire.

Entertainment – besides sitting by the pool or going for walks along the country lanes – consisted of touring the big old Château de Brissac, where the 14th Duke of Brissac still lives with his wife and four kids. The château – once the tallest in all of France and still the tallest in the Loire – has quite a history, having been fought over during the French religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. When King Louis XII and his mother, Marie de Medici (widow of King Henry IV, the former Henry of Navarre who converted to Catholicism with the quip that Paris was worth a mass) fought over her role in the realm, they met right here in what was considered neutral territory. They patched things up, but only for a brief period; soon enough Louis tired of his mother’s meddling and banished her.

The Château de Brissac

And Mark in the very room where Marie de Medici and Louis XIII met to try to patch things up

And then we’d go into the nearest larger city, Angers, where the people didn’t seem that mad at all. Angers, it turns out, is the capital of Anjou from where the Dukes of Anjou ruled. The Angevins played a central role in English history starting from when Henry II – Count of Anjou, great-grandson of William the Conqueror, and husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine, perhaps the most illustrious of all medieval women – ascended to the throne of England in 1154. He thereby established the House of Plantagenets who were to rule England until 1485.

The seemingly impregnable castle of Anjou

And thus ends our first stop in the Loire. Until we got here we’d been considering a long-distance bike trip in 2017 along the Loire. But after a day ride from our château that just wasn’t that pretty, we kind of decided that wasn’t likely to happen. So no big bike trip next year, but we do have a few more days in the Loire when we move west to Amboise.

Getting ready for lunch in the main square of Angers

The doors into the Cathedral of Angers

Another early morning shot of the Château L’Épinay

One little excursion was lunch in the small town of Montjean, where there were pieces of animal art all over

Including this

In Montjean we climbed to the church where this cool Jesus was hanging

The Château de Brissac had beautiful grounds for strolling and sitting and reading

Most of the art in the Château de Brissac was portraits of family members. This portrait, though, was of Veuve Cliquot who gave her name to one of the great champagnes of France. Pictured with her is her great-granddaughter who later became the first woman with a drivers license in all of France!

File this under strange signs. Now, ostensibly there’s nothing wrong with indicating that some water source is not for drinking. This sign was over a urinal though, which definitely makes it strange.