castles revisited

I don’t think my heater is working today, my room has been cold all day (which I hear is the norm here, but heretofore my chambers have been nice ‘n’ warm).  They probably turned off the heat period on account of the weather.  I think this is slightly premature.  This is just my opinion.  Also, someone used my bathroom and left the seat up, which is fine, its not my house, but I had some things drying in there that I’d rather not have shared with the general public.  Oh well.  Also, my room smells of bananas.  I don’t have any bananas. Mysterious.

 

In other adventures, Saturday I visited Chateau Brezé and the abbey Fontevraud with SUNDEF.  But to keep things chronological, I’ll finish the story of the chateau excursion from the Saturday before.

 

This puts us back at the 21^st of March. 

 

EXT – DAY. Place de Lafayette.  ISABEL and SHANNON are running through an open-air market, darting past shoppers and weaving through produce stands.  They make their way through the market, cut through a garden, and dash down a busy street, clearly in a hurry to get somewhere.  They turn a corner and stumble toward Place André Leroy to see a bus up ahead.  Out of breath and sore from the run, they pause, take a deep breath and continue running, reaching the bus entrance to find MR. MELIN, their Translation professor and the director of their program.

 

Mr. Melin

Vous êtes interdites!

 

Isabel

Quoi ? Quelle heure est-il?

 

Shannon

7h27. Qu’est-ce que c’est ça, Mr. Melin?

 

Mr. Melin (smiling)

Interdites.

 

Shannon

Pas encore ! Pas encore!

 

Laughing, he let’s them on the bus.  They stumble on out of breath to find seats together at the back of the bus.  A few minutes later the bus departs and Mr. Melin picks up the microphone and addresses the bus full of students.

 

Mr. Melin

Bonjour tout le monde!

 

Tout le monde

Bonjour.

 

Mr. Melin

Shannon ? Je ne t’entends pas!

 

Brief pause, and then from the back of the bus

Shannon

Bonjour!

 

It was one of those days.  Isabel and I take Translation with Mr. Melin.  We sit, along with our friend Ryan, in the first row.  We also make a lot of silly mistakes.  For example, I have a tendency to make up words and perpetually misconjugate the second person singular. In addition, Isabel and I are always together whenever we run into Mr. Melin outside of class, and thus that day he decided to name us le couple.  Although, about three quarters of the way through the day he changed his mind and decided to go with les jumelles (the twins).  Somewhere between the first and second chateau, he decided to tell us that he would continue giving us a hard time all day.  Just us.  His reason?  He found it amusing.  Luckily, he’s actually a pretty nice guy so this only involved his constant threatening to withhold our (mine and Isabel’s) tickets and brochures everywhere we went. 

 

So where did we go?

 

We started off at Chateau d’Amboise.  It’s a beautiful castle that sits above a picturesque town at the edge of a river.  The castles was used by kings and princes, most notably by François I who liked to pal around with Leonardo da Vinci.  Da Vinci got all the invites to all the cool parties and got to hang out and make cool things.  This happened so often in fact, that da Vinci’s ashes are buried in the chapel at Amboise. 

 

Next we visited Chateau du Clos-Lucé, the small castle down the road from Amboise, where da Vinci lived.  It was built in 1471 on the remains of an 11^th century castle.  The castle had a few royal residents before da Vinci moved in, in 1516.  Basically the king, François I was like, “hey da Vinci, you’re a cool guy, you should live and work in France for a while.” And da Vinci was like, “Well, that’s all well and good your highness, but where would I stay?” And the king was like, “Don’t even worry about it da Vinci, you can totally move into the castle down the street, I’ll take care of the whole thing” to which da Vinci surely replied something to the effect of, “Sweet!”

 

While living and working there, da Vinci designed the gardens.  The grounds were beautiful as they were, but I hear the time to visit is a little later in the year when the flowers have bloomed.  I’d like to go back at some point, because even without the flowers I kept walking around thinking about how cool da Vinci must have been and how if I had a party in the 16^th century, I’d totally invite him.

 

After that we drove to Chateau de la Blois which, aesthetically, was my favorite castle.  It was comprised of several buildings, each built in a radically different style. 

 

I decided that, first of all, I ought to buy a castle at some point, and second of all, if I had my choice of castles I’d probably take this one, just based on the courtyard and the staircase. 

 

As we left Blois, my camera battery died, but it went peacefully, having documented Blois to my heart’s content.  The last chateau we visited was Cheverny.  Le Chateau de Cheverny is definitely what I think of when I think of rich French people hanging out playing a game of polo.  It reminded me a lot of the property from the The Rules of the Game, a French poetic realism film (I gave the translated title) about some rich French people who don’t want to deal with an impending war and all the problems of the world, so they haul up in a big house that looks like Cheverny (for all I know it is) and throw themselves a big party for a few weeks.  Intrigue ensues.

 

Cheverny was the most modern castle we visited, built in the 17^th century.  It is notable for its legion of dogs that are used for racing…and maybe hunting? I was told in French over a week ago, I can’t quite remember.  Anyway, the grounds were beautiful, they reminded me of my favorite magazine ad, I saw it in America for a French jeans company.  So I guess it was unfortunate that I didn’t have a camera.  Also, another thing that made Cheverny notable, Isabel saw the world’s most beautiful Italian man with another tour group.  She was smitten and said something in English to that effect.  Turns out he spoke English.  She never actually spoke to him, but he knew. Oh he knew. 

 

And those were the adventures of just over a week ago.

 

This most recent Saturday I went with the Notre Dame group to Chateau de Brezé which was fun because it had extensive underground fortresses.  There were extensive warnings for claustrophobics and the disabled before we entered so we were excited.  And we were not disappointed.  It wasn’t half to tricky to negotiate as the Spider Caves of Yosemite, but they weren’t exactly easy either.  There were several steep, worn steps, and small underground hills.  It was fun.  My favorite part was that underneath the chateau’s distillery there was a light show with slides projected onto the dark walls of the caves with music in the background.  It was cheesy, granted, but I liked it anyway. 

 

Oh! And Cardinal Richelieu used to live there for a while.  I was on the tour, minding my own business, when the tour guide lets it drop, “Oh by the way guys, this is Cardinal Richelieu’s room.”  Oh sure Mr. Tour Guide, Cardinal Richelieu, no biggie, sure, let’s just glide on through. 

 

Then we ate lunch at the castle. I didn’t end up eating dinner until 10 hours later, at which point I still wasn’t hungry.  Needless to say, lunch was good. 

 

After lunch we visited Fontevraud, the abbey where Eleanor of Aquitaine is buried.  By her second marriage, she became Queen of England briefly, but she was a great patroness of the arts in France that she became the first and only British queen to be buried outside of British soil.  The abbey was beautiful, I took pictures.  

...pictures to follow....