Extravagance

21 Septembre

Sunday was a pretty hum-drum day.

Actually, no it wasn't. I totally spaced. Wowzers. Long Monday.

Sunday was NOT hum-drum. This past weekend was le weekend de patrimoine, and essentially that means that lots of nifty old houses and palaces and things like that are open and free to the public. So, Carleigh and I revisited the Musee de Beaux Arts, which houses lots of paintings and sculptures. After that, we climbed le Tour de Phillipe le Bon (tour= tower).

316 stairs. All spiraling up, up, up, until finally, a breath taking view of Dijon. The city and its suburbs spread for miles, and the surrounding hills are beautifully green.

We also stopped into to see the Notre Dame de Dijon, which was small but beautiful. There are frescoes on the walls attributed to Rogier van der Weyden. He's a pretty big deal.

Today commenced with an early morning. Well, not too early. We met at the bus at 9. Peter and Wright were noticeably absent, as they had missed their train from Munich and another en route back to France (first one, their fault; second one, because one of their trains had technical difficulties). Thus, they were taking more trains to meet us in Tours.

Most of our day was just driving. We ate a cafeteria for lunch, which for not very good food was way expensive. Madame handed out 50 euros per three people, and my group of three used 49.60. And none of us even ordered anything that expensive, or so we thought; it was ridiculous.

The afternoon brought countryside and the chateaux de Chambord.

Massive.

Here's a picture:

Francois 1er built this place just because he, at the ripe age of 20, liked to hunt in the nearby woods. And also because he wanted to leave an artistic legacy. And since he was king, he could do that kind of thing. Interestingly, he didn't even live to see it finished. In fact, his son didn't even live to see the castle finished. Crazy. Think how much time and money went in to building this place. And for what? The one who wanted it never even saw it realized. I mean, its definitely neat to visit. I really enjoyed walking around, discovering all the rooms and the staircases, like the double staircase designed by Leonardo da Vinci.

You can't tell from the picture, but it works kind of like a DNA strand...there are two spiraling staircases that never meet wrapped around one center. Nifty.

You could also walk out on the top of the castle and see for miles. It really was beautiful.

(ok, so I've always known you could put pictures in your blog, I've just been too lazy to do it...now, as I've discovered how fun it is, be prepared to see lots more.)

After Chambord, we continued to Tours where Peter and Wright finally joined us. We had dinner at a restuarant near the train station, which is beautiful. The menu at the restaurant had english translations of all the dishes...but very, very hilarious translations.

For example:

Saveur liberique: Tortillas, verrine de pois chiche, salade en coque de brique au poulet

translation: swung, glass cup of chickpea, salad in hull of brick to the marinaded chicken white cheese.

There were also several that said things like, "salad crazy about duck breast" or "marbled by salmon on its bed." Not even kidding.

Dinner ended around 10:30, and Lauren and I came right back to the hotel. We're exhausted and are plannig to go to bed pretty soon. Its amazing how traveling wears you out, even if you really didn't do much other than walk around a giant castle.