Blois

Tuesday October 2, 2007

I'll start today by mentionning that all pics and entries up to Tuesday are now up to date thanks to the Tourism office of le Grand Pressigny. All pics above were taken in Blois.

Was I talking about the weather Gods yesterday? Today we chose a day in Blois which is about 1 ½ hours away and shortly after departing Barrou it started to rain and then pour and then come down torrentially. We had visions of inundations the like of those we’d experienced in the south in years gone by. But by the time we got to Blois, the rain had abated and we had a great day touring the town with NO RAIN.
We spent the morning touring the old town and found some great walking shopping streets for the girls (aka Jackie). We stopped for lunch at the Hotel Monarque, a very nice mid range restaurant. The girls had moules while the boys had lapin. I’ll let you translate. Following lunch we headed out to the biblioteque so I could post my blog. No luck! Without hotel internet, France is a tough spot to get a blog posted. We can only hope for tomorrow.
In the afternoon we toured the chateau, at one point in the late 1800’s the home of the court of France. The decoration in these places boggles the mind. They sure had a lot of incredibly talented artisans in the old days. We could never come close to reproducing these works today. Following the chateau, we headed out for Barrou and guess what? The rain began again. The landscape sure is green! It looks more like spring than fall.
Despite being very close today to the largest chateau in the Loire – Chambord – we opted not to visit it, because from our past experience, Chambord is a never ending tour on a less than impressive site and also - we chose to just focus on Blois today.

Back in Barrou, the skies again cleared and we BBQ’d lamb in the courtyard, drank some more great wine and had another great meal – boy are we spoiled!