France 2013

Do you know how to tell you are in Orleans, France instead of New Orleans, USA?  Taste the bread! The bread in France is heavenly and we enjoyed every piece.

We went to France for about a week in October. We rented a car and drove down to the Loire Valley and stayed in Orleans (famous for Joan of Arc). We didn't see a single thing about Joan. We spent our time roaming the countryside, instead. It is a good thing we rented a GPS, too, or we would have never found anything.

 This is the first (and only!) chateau we visited. The Chateau de Checonceau is considered possibly the most popular in all of France. We were lucky that this wasn't a holiday or summer time. The grounds and gardens were very nice and there were people, but no crowds. We ate lunch in the self-serve cafeteria since the restaurant was completely booked. The French take their food and restaurants very seriously. Apparently, a lot of people drove out here just to eat lunch! We had delicious quiche. It was really excellent!

 The chateau is built out over the River Cher. It looks sort of like it is built on a bridge, but it still had a complete basement and four floors up. The kitchens were in the bottom so the servants ran up and down stairs a lot. The kitchen and storage rooms took up the entire basement area. They were huge.

 This portrait of Louis XIV hangs in the Louis XIV Drawing Room. The room gets its name because he visited here exactly one time in 1650. Jim took about twenty pictures of it since this is in the textbook he teaches World History from. The textbook reproduction is pretty bad.

This is the Five Queens' Bedroom. It is named this because there were actually five different queens who used it at five different times. We wonder if it was once the "Three Queens' Bedroom"?

 This is the Cathedral at Vendome. We took a walk up to the castle and this is the view looking back down to the town.

 This is what is left of the Castle at Vendome. It has obviously fallen into disrepair over the last 600 odd years. It had some truly wonderful gardens, though. There was a flush toilet up in one of the watchtowers for the tourists!

 This is the Cathedral at Chartres. It is considered the best cathedral in France. It looks big on the outside and is unbelievably huge on the inside. It is impossible to actually take pictures of it.

Here is the one everyone wants to see: Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The problem was that everyone wants to see it. We were there on an off-season on an off-day and there were buckets of people everywhere. It must be frustrating to try to attend the Cathedral. They were holding Mass while we went through and the tourist stream doesn't even slow down. They aren't disrespectful; there are just too many people. 

 This is why Notre Dame got to be so famous. The so-called "flying buttress" allowed the medieval builders to make the walls higher and the windows bigger than ever before.

 Even here on the backside of the church, you can see that the outside walls are pretty because of the buttresses and decorations.

 This is the oldest rose window in the church. The windows have survived hundreds of years of pollution, wars and other disasters.

We had to cross the street and click in the middle of the Champs d'Elysees to take this picture of the Arch de Triomphe. This whole area used to be pretty junky and it is now the premier shopping street in Paris.

 There were so many tourists you almost couldn't see the monuments. If you zoom the picture, you will see that the entire top of the Arch is covered with them!

 Trivia question: What color is the Eiffel Tower?
Answer: When it was built, a special paint in "Eiffel Tower Brown" was mixed and the color has been used ever since. Growing up, you only see black and white photos and assume it is black. It is actually a very pleasant color.

 When you get close enough, you start to see how intricately decorated the Tower actually is.

 The elevators go all the way up and much of the structure is, of course, under renovation.

This is the Paris you will see in all the spy movies! Just after we got back, The Bourne Identity was on TV. If you want to see a lot of Paris, watch the movie!