Bye Bye Blois

Grammy and I had a lovely 9 days spent in Blois. It is such a quaint picturesque town, curving streets, medieval buildings, a chateau looming over it all with three magnificent cathedrals set alongside the banks of the Loire.

On Saturday we went to the public market. Wow was that a sight to behold. Of course there was the expected fruit and vegetable stands, boulangerie stands with their wide array of baked goods, and cheese stands with more goat cheese than I could eat in a year. What we didn’t expect was the mattress stand, the lingerie stands, and the “sell whatever you have lying around your house” stands. It was quite the interesting experience. We purchased wonderful food for dinner that evening and lunch for the next couple of days.

On Sunday we had tickets for a chateau excursion that left from the town of Tours. We had to take a train from Blois to Tours, as we had for our previous two excursions out of Tours. I did not check the train schedule until mid morning and lo and behold they have limited trains on Sundays! Uh oh. Thus I had to call the tourist office who we booked through to see if we could reschedule the excursion to Monday as we would not be able to make it. The woman informed me that the tour guide stated he had to turn people away for our seats so we may have to eat the money. These excursions are not cheap and thus enter me freaking out. The woman at the tourist office instructed me to call back at 12:30 to check if we could get on the tour tomorrow.

Grammy and I decided to travel in the opposite direction to the city of Orleans to see what Orleans had going on. Well they have a massive cathedral. And when I say massive, whoa do I mean massive. This is the kind of cathedral that could really scare you into believing in something! Very gothic, very beautiful, very imposing.

My telephone call to the tourist office occurred at 12:40 after we departed the train when I listened to a message stating they were closed between 12:30-2:30 for lunch. Seriously. I called back at 2:30, was told we would not be able to get on the tour, and then I pulled out a wee bit of complaining, she called the tour operator back and instructed us to show up on Monday at the instructed time and “hopefully” we would get on the bus.

Aside from the cathedral we didn’t find much to Orleans and headed back to Blois as there was a free renaissance music that evening in front of the castle. Our trip back to the train station was eventful in that we decided to shorten our walking time by hopping on the light rail. While waiting for the light rail I met an Irish woman who had just moved to France. Ahhh Ireland! It made me quite wistful upon hearing her accent. After we boarded the light rail it took me approximately 5 seconds to realize it was going the wrong way. Oops! Grammy and I lengthened our walking time by a bit but we had a laugh about it later. Always something to laugh about after the fact!
Blois is a lovely town and during the summer they have a large amount of free summer concerts and festivities that we enjoyed partaking in. The renaissance music was beautiful, but a bit sleep inducing. Post music it was back to the apartment to make dinner and pack up our belongings as we would not have time on Monday.

Monday morning we got up early to do some last minute shopping in Blois, until we realized that everything except the post office and mobile phone store are closed in Blois on Monday. Literally everything. Thus we decided to head to Tours early, and we did indeed make it onto the excursion. We were able to see the most visited chateau in the Loire valley (of which there are 1,000 chateaus) Chenonceau. This chateau is quite beautiful. And completely overrun with tourists! Approximately 6,000 tourist go through that chateau per day in the height of the summer season. Wowza. Grammy and I up until this point hadn’t seen barely any Americans, well we saw and heard them here. Sigh.
After the chaos that was touring Chenonceau we were able to tour Leonardo da Vinci’s house, Clos De Luce. He lived in a mansion with a secret tunnel to the castle Amboise for the last two years of his life. He was a favorite of several French kings, lastly being Francois I. Francois I used to use the tunnel to visit Da Vinci almost daily. It was a lovely mansion, beautiful gardens, and not crowded at all. Grammy and I were able to take a brief tea & crepe break there which was much needed.

It was then on to our last castle of the trip, Amboise. Amboise was heavily destroyed during Napoleons reign and now what stands is just 1/5 of the former size. It was very pretty, but I think Grammy and I had our fill of castles. 9 castles in all!
We then returned to the apartment and met the owner to see if he could fix the socket and if we would be getting our deposit back. What happened to the socket you may be wondering. Well Grammy did not check to see if her 10 lb (exaggerating) battery charger was dual voltage. Thus when I plugged it into the socket for her, I almost died. Okay exaggerating a bit there. How about a spark and some smoke. I promptly pulled it out and from then on 4 sockets in her room and the bathroom refused to work. We thought it might be the spark plugs so we bought new ones, flipped a bunch of switches, to no avail. Nicolas, the gentleman whose apartment it was did not seem to worried about it although he did mention having to take the socket out and check the wiring… oops. He did give us our deposit back though!

We had a late dinner at a restaurant just down the street from our apartment. We had walked by this restaurant many times during the week and always said that we should go there, well our last night was it! There was a 30 minute wait so we decided to meander down the road to see if we could get a drink first. We entered a brasserie and asked if we could take a seat. We were instructed to enter the back room and take a seat there. I asked the waitress if it was okay to sit there (after we sat down) as we were just having drinks. She said no, but to go to the front room and we could have a drink there. We went to the front room, and took a seat. And were promptly told to move again. Apparently we were at a table with a tablecloth. The table directly next to us did not have a tablecloth; thus apparently no tablecloth equals drinks? After sitting at our third table we were really ready for a drink then!

At the appointed time we made our way back to the restaurant and were seated in the verrrryyyy quiet back room. We did sound a bit like a herd of American elephants entering, scraping chairs on the floor and such. Grammy said “Well we have made our entrance!” Upon perusing the menu how excited was I when I realized they had a prix fix menu for vegetarians! Quel surprise! Complete with a cereal steak! (This means a steak made of grains) My opening course was a goat cheese and tomato dish that was lovely.

Me: How is your duck pate Gram?
Gram: It is wonderful. This fresh bread they brought us goes wonderful with it. How is your dish?
Me: Fantastic but I think they have added some cream to it.
Gram: (Very loudly) Uh ohh you better take an immodium.

Ah Gram. After the cereal steak it was time to order dessert. I ordered an apple tart and was trying to explain to the waitress that I wanted sorbet with it instead of ice cream. I was then telling her that I was allergic to cow milk. The waitress kept repeating “Caww meelk?” as she didn’t understand what I was saying, so Gram pipes in with a very large MOOOOO. I then instructed Gram she is not allowed to moo in restaurants. She thought it was hilarious.

All in all it was a fantastic meal and a perfect way to end our 9 days in Blois, of which I have many fond memories.

The next morning it was time for a day of traveling. With 100+ lbs of baggage.
Grammy and I first took the train from Blois to Paris; while on the train the officers checked our tickets. The officer who entered our compartment entered into a long discussion with the gentlemen next to us en francais of course. The gentle men next to us were in the military and thusly had received a military discount but had to show their military id’s. One of them forgot his, and had to pay an extra 90 euros!
When Grammy and I exited the train I asked her if she had understood what was going on and she guessed correctly. Good job Grammy interpreting the French! Her response? “I don’t read mystery books for nothin’ you know.” (:

The train was late arriving in Paris giving us 15 minutes to catch the next one to Marseille. After I carried beaucoup des baggages off the train I stood under the train schedule not understanding why our train was not on there. After consulting the tickets it stated that we were leaving out of a different station! Qeuel horreur! Upon exiting the 1st train station we saw a sign for the other which said 1 minute. Hah! Two people with a combined age of 107 + over 100 lbs of baggage does not mean we were moving at our top speed! We walked as fast as we could and made it to the station, after I realized which track it was on and that it was departing in less than one minute it was time for panic mode. I started running towards the train with the conductor blowing his whistle and me waving franticly with Grammy trailing me. He was waving me in the door, I turned around and told Grammy to run like she has never ran. Okay maybe I just said “Grammy run!” Boy Grammy can run for a 75 year old! As soon as she entered the door it closed behind her and we were off! Whew!

On the TGV there is assigned seating and we have been lucky enough to get the seats downwind of the broken toilet. Gross. Train officer is cute though and as he walked by he smiled at me which prompted Grammy to go into multiple eyebrow lifting mode.

After we arrive in Marseille it is then on to Cassis which is our final destination. I was reading the reviews of our hotel online last night and a lot of them mention a rather unfriendly woman at the desk. Something to look forward to!