Toussaint, Day 2...

Day 2 – dimanche 25 octobre
Chateaux of the Loire Valley

Next morning we started out bright and early – 3 more chateaux were on the schedule. Breakfast was delicious. French hotels on the whole have a gift for continental breakfast. Coffee or tea, plus bread galore (I really like bread), yogurt, cereal and juice. It’s the same stuff that you tend to find in the U.S., but it’s all fresher, and therefore much better.

First up – Chateau Azay-le-Rideau. Nice enough, but again, I’ve already forgotten the story. These silly chateaux all blend together after a bit. We had fun frolicking on the grass after the visit, I remember that.

Chateau de Langeais – this one was actually really cool. It’s older than the older chateaux that we’d been seeing. It’s about 1100 years old as opposed to only 600 or so years old. Very nifty. We got to climb up on the ramparts and see where the guards would have patrolled.

Chateau d’Amboise. Easily my favorite. This might have had something to do with the fact that it was the last chateau on the schedule, but I would like to not be that cynical. It was better than the others, plain and simple. It’s situated on top of a hill, so you have a view of Amboise from every angle. On top of that, the day itself was gorgeous, so that didn’t hurt either.

After we finished with 3 chateaux, we got to have a wine tasting. Our guide, Annabelle, took us to a nearby cave to try some local white wine. We got the entire wine making process explained to us, and it’s actually really cool. She told us that while they’re fermenting the bottle, should it be opened, the force is equal to 2 ½ tires blowing out. One bottle of wine. I have a whole new respect for it now. The cave we were in had about 4 million bottles being prepped, and each year they ship or sell about half of that. We figured that could keep one person continuously drunk for about 1,000 years. Not that you want to drink the wine – since it’s not finished, it’s all really, really, really dry. After our little tour, we had a degustation of about 6 different wines to finish our day.