Chateau Chenonceau 2

I am backtracking a little bit but these are two shots of the art gallery halls over the river at this castle.  They do not like you taking pics of the artwork, ( I understand) so you'll have to use your imagination.  However, it was beautiful and larger than life. 

Last Pics Chateau Chambord

I have to admit this is my favorite picture I took of this place in two days.  I also did some black and whites but I don't know what to think about them.  I am such a huge fan of colors.  Always have been.

Anyway, I am including my favorite
black and white here too.

See what you think. 
I am so glad I got out of bed early this day, I can't even tell you!  It was incredible!

I have about 30 more pics of the castle and lots of info I will attatch later but for now this will have to do. 
Its getting late.




          LOVE THIS PLACE!!!

Chambord 2

Looking from the upper level down along the river/canal that connects to the mote.  Here we were about 100 ft. in the air.  Maybe more.

  The architecture in this ONE center piece of the roof top was astounding.  It was all hand carved and hand designed.  I feel so limited by the words I know to describe what I am seeing in this place.  You can not imaging how large it is OR what you are seeing.  And the stained glass work is hundreds of years old surrounding it on each level allowing the sunlight in.

Chateau Chambord 1

So we traveled by train to the Loire Valley.  Also known as the valley of kings.   We stayed on the grounds of Chateau Chambord.  ( yes just like the after dinner sippy that tastes like berries.  Anyway, we walked around the grounds, and I took waay too many pictures of course.  So I will do my best to put as many here as I can. 

This site does not like if I attatch more than 3 or 4 to each page so bear with me.  N & K are in the foreground here.  And  this was our view from our bedroom window.  This "chateau" is my favorite.  I made a bunch of notes about this place from the brocures, but i can not cut and paste like I thought so it will be a project to transfer all that info here.  I will work on it another time.  For now you'll have to just enjoy the pics. 

I will add that the first day we were here, I snapped off a bunch but then the next morning I woke up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked out the window and saw some fog.  I grabbed my camera and RAN out the door to catch what I could before it burned off.   The morning pics are by far the best I have taken and my personal favorites...  wish you ALL could  have been there.  It was breathtaking! (and worth getting out of bed for!)  ha

Above is the library room.  This book case is about 20 ft. tall.
The stairway is designed by Leonardo Di Vinci and it is a famous
design.  You will read more about it later.  Its getting late here. ha

Chateau Chenonceau

This castle is elegant and unique in our opinion.  We have visited it before and we keep coming back.  It was built in the 16th century and was known as the ladies chateau. 

They were very powerful women I might add.   (does "Off with their head" sound familiar?)   It was built over the River Cher and there are two halls that are art galleries over top of the arches on the right side over the river. 

While walking through the art galleries the river flows under you and there is a lot of light coming through ancient stained glass windows. 

The paintings are larger than life and     hundreds of years old!  The place is truly spectacular.

The front door is about 20 ft. tall.  It was hand sculpted and carved out of wood then painted with the coat of arms of the man and woman who first built the chateau.

Sorry about all the extra space in between pics, I still am fighting with this site to arrange things the way I want it to  look. 

Still Sep 14th

And we're still walking... Are we there yet?

Sep 16th am...We traveled by train to Amboix (Loire Valley) to stay for the night at the Castle Chambord.  Actually in France they call them "Chateaus".  But the size of it SCREAMS castle.

Newton and Karen make it to Paris

Sep 13th... We all met in in Paris.  N & K got there before we did.  They had lunch and took a nap and then we all went out to dinner at a nice little local place 3 blocks from the apartment. 
The food was great, and we had a blast.

The next day when we got up, our Key West kids were ready to run.  I was surprised.  They did very well getting over the jet lag thing.  In fact, after the first day and a good night sleep it seemed like they WERE over it.  That could be the fastest recovery I've seen Especially for their first time here. 
(well many years for Karen)

Sep 14th,  We took off for a nice walk through Luxembourg Gardens (only 3 blocks from our apartment).  We  wandered up through St. Germain area passed tons of restaurants and bars and a fun night life area to the river front and on along the Seine River through downtown Paris making our way to the Eiffel Tower. 

We walked passed the Louvre Museum.  It takes up about 6 city blocks.  If you walked from end to end on each floor inside that museum, you would cover 13 miles.  It a big large.  We went INTO the Museo D'Orsay across the river from the Louvre.  My personal museum there.  It is smaller, easier to navigate and they have plenty of classic and contemporary art as well as sculpture on display. 

We ended up putting on about 5 miles that day.  Didn't see it coming.  It happens a lot in Paris.  Even using the Metro you still walk a ton.  But had great weather. 

Last Stop for the Boat

Sep 13th


This is the resting place for the boat.  The dock on the left.  We tied up and got cleaned up and had a nice dinner.  (musssels)  I know there was some other stuff too and it was great also, but honestly,
I can only remember the mussels. 
Thats awful isn't it. ha

So after a week of only seeing birds (lots of birds and man large blue herons)  I was asking the guys if  they have ANY ground critters here like... squirrels, rabbits, foxes???  Looook to your right.  I kid you not.  I was looking out the window across the river and thought i saw a dog come out of the woods.  I did, sorta... It was the coolest thing to me to see that.  He meandered in no hurry along the tree line eating whatever he was picking out of the bushes.  Couple times looked in my direction. 

It was much darker than it looks in this pic, i was playing with the exposure settings for as much light as possible.  I really loved seeing this guy.  It was a great omen.

Last Lock of Trip

This lock was so intimadating looking when we pulled in.  It was towering over us at least 25 ft overhead.

It felt like we were entering the gates from hell.  Really, it was gigantic.  This was actually a double lock.  We lifted up into this one, only to have to clear one more on the back side.  It was wierd.

I ran up to the top and grabbed this pic while it was filling.  You can see where we came from behind.

Second to the last lock

Lorenzo started a sauce for the mussels for our dinner.  But it was not done yet when we went through this lock so he was holding his stern line and stirring the sauce too.  Multi tasking over here boss.

We were all getting pretty excited to be moving onto our next adventure.  This would be our last night on the boat. 

There were a lot more locks than we expected, and not as much time as we thought to explore the little towns along the way.  But it was fun and now we know certain things we would do differently the next time.  And as much fun as we had, pretty sure there will be a next time.  Yippee!!!

While the water was blowing into the lock the boat started hopping around so Lozo had to tend to his lines.  His sauce was bubbling so he called to me to stir it for him, but i think he tricked me, cause he was taking this picture of ME multi tasking.  Pay no attention to the glass of wine in my hand.  We were almost done for the day.

After all that at the end of the evening I have to say this was the highlight of our meal.  It was 4 lbs of mussels in white wine, garlic, fresh tomato and assorted herbs.  This was a larger glass dish than it looked.  There was not one mussel left when we were done.  Sorry Maggie. 

Traffic Jam

RAM SPEED!!!

I don't think everyone on this river had bow thrusters.  In tight situations people were scrambling.
We were just staying out of the way.

Lunch time at the lock, we laid up alongside and took a little break from our watches. 








I loved all the flower baskets at these locks.  It was so pretty.  This was one of the last locks we went through.  Only one more to go...

Hand Cranking Bridges

So this bridge was different.  We had to hand crank this one open.  We went through about 6 of these in the last couple days.









There was a huge counter weight on one side so we just had to crank slow and steady.  Jody had been doing all the cranking in the locks and I was driving mostly so I volunteered to do these.  It was interesting.

Market Day last pics

This couple on right had the best cheese stand. 

He had a glass of red going from breakfast. 

I love the French.

Above 15 Different choices of olives, fresh, marinated, REAL olives.  They don't taste like they do from the jar.  Nothing like it.

Left... Taking the goods back to the boat. 

It was about 10 am and some of the locals made

the pub their last stop on the way home from the market.  

More Market Day Pics

In France these are called Moules.  In the US we call them mussels.  In any language you want they are Yummo!  You'll  have to see what Lorenzo did to this pile of mussels on the boat on this night!

Maggie, your name came up many times on this day!  Thinking of you kiddee!

Market Day At Last

We made it to Clemacy

This town had public tie up area.  It was free, and there was water and elec but we needed neither.
They also had showers and toilettes available.
In Key West it would have cost 100.00 for the night

In the background you can see the top of the chuuch tower up on the hill.  The church was gorgeous.  Also it was the location of the market the next morning.  And the blue skies were with us.

It would not be right to have a story about France and not have pics of at least one incredible chruch.