Road Trip: France, Part Two

So I started to relate the tale of a trip of yore - the road trip through France. After our run through Bretagne, we headed east into the Loire Valley.

Our home away from home was a gem in Cravant les Croteaux, just outside of Chinon, called Domaine de Pallus. Since we have been there, one of the next generation has returned home to the family vineyards that surround the inn and launched a rather successful effort to increase the profile of their wines, under a label of the same name. It appears that the inn has been opened under new ownership as Les Camelias des Pallus.

The town of Chinon itself is a cute afternoon's wander, with the Chinon castle at the top of the hill overlooking town. A culinary highlight was a little restaurant called Les Annees 30 at 78 Rue Voltaire, where we stuffed ourselves full of duck and the like.

We spent a few days taking the trusty Twingo down country roads to see some of the lovely Loire castles. A highlight in the summer is that the roads are spotted with sunflower fields, adding much to the atmosphere. The top three were definitely Chenonceau castle, Azay le Rideau and the gardens at Villandry. You could do all of these in a full day from Chinon - driving the hour and half to Chenonceau, then working your way west to Villandry and then to Azay le Rideau.

Chenonceau is about an hour and a half from Chinon along smaller roads. It's spectacularly set, as it's built over the Cher river. As it was raining the day we were there, we spent little time in the formal gardens and instead wandered the rambling interior. One particularly entertaining part, as with most historic sites in France, was the number of teenage employees standing around doing nothing save occasionally collecting a ticket. As two friends at the time were living in France and taking advantage of all of the benefits of the country's socialist tendencies, I quickly learned that this was part of the subsidies an aimless teenager can count on. As a tradeoff for the educational subsidies, living stipends, rent discounts, health care, and whatever else these teenagers were getting from the government, they had to agree to work a government job. And, unsurprisingly, there weren't enough jobs for all these people, so the government created jobs to do such things as stand around chateaus. I'd sign up for that in a minute.

We then dodged some rain and had a ramble around the gardens at Villandry. On a lovely day, you could take a picnic and spend hours running around the joint. They're formal "Renaissance" gardens that are a truly spectacular example of the form.

The last gem was Azay le Rideau, a small castle about twenty minutes from Chinon and more or less on the way back from Chenonceau. It's a moody place, surrounded by the Indre River that lends itself to lovely photos. There's a cute little town around it where you can wander about and have a snack. I bought some lovely watercolors from a charming gent whose name is lost to history.

We easily could have spent another few days in the Loire valley, eating delicious picnics and gazing at gardens and fields of flowers. But the road trip marched on. Next stop: Bordeaux.