Week-end des châteaux

This weekend IES took the second and last organized trip of the semester to tour the castles of the Loire Valley. There are many, but over the course of Saturday and Sunday we got a chance to visit five:

Château de Montgeoffroy

Château d'Azay-le-Rideau

Château de Villandry

Château d'Amboise

Château de Chenonceau

The pictures don't begin to do justice, but at least it's a taste of a visual for you guys. I can't describe the feeling of fulfillment you get when you stand in the middle of an Italian-style garden, next to a massive fountain, surrounded by beautifully smelling and gorgeously designed gardens, looking at a castle in the not-so-far distance.

Once.

Then try doing it four more times.

Each of them were awesome if their own way; the first (Montgeoffroy), basically a very lavish house, was probably the least impressive because it was more of an incredibly ornate mansion than an actual château. We also weren't allowed to take any pictures (period!) of the interior, which made it less memorable because I can't reflect on the good parts through my pictures. It had a stable, which was cool, and it was still inhabited, also cool but kind of annoying because we had to be quiet throughout the tour. Although it didn't win any prizes in my book, I'm glad we saw it. I'm also glad we saw it first so our expectations were wildly low and then blown out of the water by the four that followed it. I don't even know if that phrase made sense but I'm not worried about revising it because I want to tell you all about the other chateaux we went to.

Second in line was Azay-le-Rideau, which I liked a lot. It was a relatively small, but majestic, castle with grass fields surrounding it and really pretty forest beyond. It had a moat around it and a couple bridges here and there, with a path that circled the perimeter which allowed for pictures from every angle (don't worry, I didn't miss any.)

We stopped on a bridge to admire the fact that you could bend over backwards on the railing and pretend the reflection in the moat was the real thing. Pretty trippy.

It's the little things in life.

The fall colors were really beautiful too, which enhancd the view around us and made the moat very colorful.

After Azay-le-Rideau, we moved on to Château de Villandry, which had absolutely breathtaking gardens.

Jardins à Villandry

Saturday night, we stayed in Tours (a city in the Loire Valley) in a hotel. Three of my friends and I went out on the town and I got my first fancy-pants cocktail (the "Swimming Pool") at an Irish pub. We were proud of ourselves for finding the pocket of night life in the midst of a very quiet, dark city.

The Swimming Pool is the curvy blue one. I got my fruit servings for the day.

Sunday morning, we got up bright and early, had a yummy breakfast at the hotel, and headed out to see what would become the most beautiful memories I will probably have in my head for quite some time.

First up: Château d'Amboise, a castle on the edge of the Loire River with a small chapel in which rest Leonardo Da Vinci's remains (Wait, what? Whoa, I know). The château was breathtaking (I know, I've been having my breath taken away a lot in this blog entry. Okay, it was spectacular, amazing, wonderful, awe-inspiring, astounding, stunning, amazing and incredible. That work?)

Leonardo Da Vinci! Man, that was cool. We just stood around in awe for a while and took a lot of pictures and stood and gazed some more, and then we headed down and got lunch (I ate a croque-monsieur, Orangina and half a sugar crêpe). Then, it was off to our fifth and final château destination: Château de Chenonceau, a castle my friend Abigail knew a lot about because she had written a paper about it for a French class at Bates.




Chenonceau was an amazing château as well. It is a sort of bridge structure than spans across the Cher River, creating an impressive (? I'm running out of adjectives that convey my reaction to these views...) mirror effect when you look at it from the side.

I don't know that you see its reflection too well in this picture, but it's pretty anyway. Those're my friends Abigail and Preston.

So then we wandered around in the gardens and the "labyrinth" (don't worry, it didn't hold a candle to some of the corn mazes I've been in) and then reloaded the bus and headed home to Nantes. All in all, a spectacular weekend with a lot of cool memories and awesome pictures.

Yaay bridge climbing near a french castle among autumn trees!

Picture for Vogue: Château Edition