Day Six – The World’s First Staircase, and Other Wonders - May 25, 2011

Today was market day in Loches, so after breakfast our first mission was to explore. Our overall plan was to wander around the market for a while and pick up some supplies for a picnic lunch at one of the chateaux around. It turns out the market in Loches is actually quite large, given the size of the town, and it took us longer to explore than we’d expected – it seemed to sprawl over most of the pedestrian streets and alleys.

We bought some very strong and smelly local goat cheese, another variety from somewhere else (I really should start writing this sort of thing down as I go, my memory is getting progressively worse as I age), a lovely loaf of bread, some chefs salad (apparently salad consisting of grated carrot, peas, corn, and other assorted veg in a dressing is a chef salad – who knew?), and two chicken legs/thighs from the chicken roaster man (one in every market – absolutely indispensable).

We loaded the aforementioned into Nancy and set of for Chenonceau (incidentally, upon confirming the spelling, I’ve just discovered that Google Maps street view has outdone itself at Chenonceau – it appears they used a handheld device rather than the normal car-mounted jobbie, and you can now take a complete virtual tour of the outside from the comfort of your home). After a relatively short drive, we arrived and found ourselves a free parking space in the parking lot located just outside the chateau.

While it wasn’t quite what I’d expected, it was beautiful. For some reason I had an image in my head of a château which was anchored to the land at one end, and in a lake at the other, if that makes sense. I guess from the angles of the photos I’d seen, they didn’t really show the other side of the château, as it actually ends on the far side of the river. It even includes a door and some stairs down from the far end of the main gallery which spans the main floor. As an interesting side note, we’ve been told this evening that during the Vichy government, the river that Chenonceau girds marked the boundary between French and German France – evidently going into the gallery from one end out the through the other effectively put you in a different country. Having said that, I’ve not actually confirmed this anywhere, so don’t take it as gospel fact.

There was only one fee to get in, which gave us access to the huge gardens and the house itself (well, there were two fees, but the other included access to the wax museum, which I wouldn’t have gone into unless threatened with the pain of death, or quite frankly the pain of pain). In retrospect, I’m quite glad at the pricing scheme, as if it wasn’t for that we probably wouldn’t have gone inside, having been a bit unimpressed with Chambord the previous day.

As it turned out the kitchens in Chenonceau were worth the price of admission, if nothing else. They occupy a massive amount of real estate in what isn’t a huge house really. Incredibly interesting. Also, had we not gone inside, we would have missed the most entertaining conversation, possibly of all time.

The guidebook provided makes mention of an interesting fact about the staircase in Chenonceau. Evidently it was the first straight staircase in Europe. It seemed that some hapless tourists had either misread this, or had fundamentally misunderstood the meaning as they were having an extremely long and involved conversation about what they possibly could have used to move between floors in buildings prior to this.

Evidently, they had thought that the guidebook was saying that this was the first staircase in the world, ever, and instead of questioning this were trying to work out if this could possibly also be the first building in the world with more than one floor, or if ramps had previously been used, or other mechanisms. They were fairly certain that there were castles built before Chenonceau, but weren’t sure where. Jamie and I, on the other hand, were fairly certain that we were witnessing the beginning of the end of the human race.

Both bemused and somewhat appalled, we finished our tour of the inside of the chateaux before going back outside to find the farm and vegetable/flower garden. Both were lovely, although there weren’t as much veg as I would have expected. They did, however, have four donkeys, which is always entertaining.

After exhausting ourselves with the chateau, vegetable patch, and donkey exploration, we spread out our picnic lunch and had what turned out to be one of the best meals so far on this trip. There’s something magical about eating under a clear blue sky on a warm spring day in rural France, next to a beautiful chateau, that just makes food taste better.

After lunch, the nearby town of Amboise was on our agenda. A short 20 km drive later, we found more convenient parking (I’m getting good at that) and then followed the signs towards the chateau on foot. I’m not sure if we missed the interesting bit of town, but even after a fair bit of wandering about all we could find was one street full of naf tourist places. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to back to Amboise. We’d paid for two hours of parking, but only spent an hour before driving back to Loches for an afternoon glass of wine at the B&B.

This time, we had decided to be upfront and have the wine on the terrace. One of the owners sat down to chat with us, and we ended up having a very pleasant two hour conversation, mostly in French to my delight (as I’m trying to practice as much as I can). The owners are absolutely lovely, and have made us feel a bit guilty about smuggling in our contraband wine up to our terrace for our evening enjoyment. Not guilty enough to not do it, as that’s what we’re currently doing, but still.

Having spent the last few days gorging ourselves on rich French food, we decided tonight to go a bit lighter and have a pizza for dinner. There is a pizza place on the Grand Rue which didn’t look too bad, and it turned out not to be. It also turned out to be pretty much the cheapest meal we’ve had here, if you don’t count the picnic lunch. I don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend it for a gastronomic feast, but not bad for pizza.

Back home and a final glass (or two) of smuggled wine on the balcony as we clean up our photographs and write down our thoughts for the day. Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be a self-guided bus trip into Tours, to see what the big smoke around here is like. Should be a good day.