May 7 Some Royal Mistriss’ Chateau
An hour from Saumur, about a 10 Euro toll road expense away…where they take Amex but not Master Card or Visa….is a crazy Chateau that Bonnie found called Chenonceaux. King Henri I, had it built for his mistress. It sits, literally on the river Cher, insert your own Cher Bono joke. The river runs through the friggin castle. Is there something sexual here I am missing? So anyway King Henri croaks and his wife, who was a Medici, in others words, connected…you know what I mean..decides to kick out the mistress and take the castle for herself…built some very cool gardens and so it goes…more kings, more mistresses, a few bastards, revolutions, wars…but the house got bigger and is still standing….they just don’t build like they used to over the river.
Second Chateau was newer, less familia drama, and more garden focused. This was Villandry.
After the gardens of Villandry, we headed to our third and final Chateau, in Breze. It was built on old troglodyte ruins and it claimed to have the deepest moat in France. Now on our way over, we saw farmers out planting seeds in their fields and as soon as he was done putting the seed down flocks of crows were landing in the field eating a fair share of the farmer’s work. I said, which I found hilarious but Bon begs to differ – you be the judge, that it looked to me like one bird found the farmer’s seed and tweeted out the location to all of his followers….anyway. Back to our little castle to rest up for dinner, after a brief stop a a local distillery for a tasting of Cherry Kirsch, the original Triple Sec, Pastis and such.