Ruh roh, need to backtrack a bit…apologies mum (I think you’re the only one who this is important to). So anyway I’ve stumbled my way magically to the end of my school semester (pretty much…). Sadly, that involved a number of days of REAL SCHOOL WORK. I mean “real” is still relative, but it was horrendous in comparison with the blissful ease of the rest of my semester. In between, however, I found plenty of time to run around, drink wine and visit some nearby sights. Two weekends ago I took a couple day trips with my favorite travel buddies. On Friday we voyaged to see Amboise, which is a small town on the Loire River famous only for its chateau and the fact that Leonardo da Vinci is actually buried there. Go figure, he spent his last years in a tiny nowhere town in France. The day started slowly because we’re all such sun freaks and it was disappointingly cloudy. But after one picnic and two bottles of champagne beside the Loire, the sun made a gracious appearance! So, joyfully, we went to explore the chateau. It looked like this:
The best part was the really sensational view of the river and the entire town (which is the cutest little old town) so we wandered around the ramparts and spied on people in their gardens. Saw this old guy:
He definitely knows what’s up. We then went and saw my main man Leo:
Then, as all ostentatious travelers should, we broke the rules and took a long nap on the grounds of the chateau. The French are real weird about their grass. It’s primarily for looking at not for frolicking or napping or playing or sitting on—and they often block it off with low fences. Crazies. We’ve realized that (if it weren’t obvious enough) we look particularly American every time we get excited about some exceptionally nice grass which we inevitably run barefoot through or take a brief cat nap upon. After our sunny repose we wandered down to the da Vinci gardens, which are the towns second (and final) tourist attraction. They expected us to pay 7 euro to wander through these grounds with some of da Vinci’s inventions. Sorry Amboise. We hopped the fence instead. But it was quite lovely…there was lots of this sort of thing:
And we found a great playground! Which we made full use of…
Some exploring, snacking and sunset watching later we returned to good ol’ Angers.
The next day we awoke with bright faces and set off with gusto on a 3 hour bike trip to Saumur! OH BUT WAIT it took more than 6 hours and was not in fact flat—as we were told it was. Anyway, it was in general, lovely. We got to cross a river on a little pull boat! Comme ca:
And there were some gorgeous stretches beside the Loire River, through all the tiniest transitory towns.
With exceedingly sore butts and tired legs we arrived in Saumur, which may actually my favourite Loire Valley city I’ve seen. There was something so wonderful about it. Situated beneath its idyllic, fairytale-esque chateau on the banks of the Loire, Saumur had a sweet little maze of cobblestone streets filled with bars, restaurants and little ice cream shops. We decided to go up to the chateau aaaaand nearly cried when we saw the 500 stairs up to the grounds. Our butts barely made it.
We walked the grounds and then back down into the city and treated ourselves to a couple post-bike ride monacos. A Monaco is a “bière blanc” (some light beer, doesn’t really matter) mixed with a grenadine-esque syrup. Now, this may sound gross, but I gotta tell you those things are delicious. We now have all purchased our own personal bottles of sirop de grenadine for just such an occasion. Two monacos, a Florentine galette (savory crêpe), and a chocolat viennois (hot chocolate with whipped cream, nom) later we wearily dragged ourselves to the train station and returned home safe and sound.
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