Loire Valley and Cheverny

Day 8: Exploring the Loire Valley Further - Cheverny

Our optimistic plans for the day involved waking up early and heading to Cheverny to see the feeding of the hunting dogs.  But when you eat dinner until 10:30 every night, early mornings are optimistic at best. Thus, we slept in, checked out and headed to Amboise for breakfast before determining our next course of action.  

We had omelettes and chatted with the couple at the table next to us - who were from Massachusetts.  It always amazes me how you can travel to another continent and meet people from a state you used to live in, but then again, in Jerusalem people came up to me, pointed at my jacket, asked if that was in Buffalo and then asked if I knew their cousin who went to Nichols.  I didn’t, but later on, asked one of my high school friends who did know him.

To be fair, we also met a lot of Americans from Colorado, California, Florida, DC, etc - nowhere near our neck of the woods.

After breakfast, I spent 11 euros on 7 pieces of chocolate - oops, but the caramels were arguable worth it, and we decided to go to Cheverny after all even though we had missed the feeding of the dogs.

On the way, mom pointed to a chateau on the other side of the river asking, “Is that Chenonceau?”  It was the wrong river, but a quick consultation with Google Maps told us that it was Chaumont, another famous and gorgeous chateau.  We passed by without stopping, but I was glad to catch a glimpse of it.

When I initially planned the trip, I assumed I could drive around to 5 different chateaus, catch a glimpse of the outside and move on.

It doesn’t work that way though.  Some of them are visible from public lands/roads/etc, but a lot of them are situated on large grounds.  You would think it would occur to me that castles aren’t just sitting out in the middle of the fields (these things have moats and gardens and such), but I’m American.  Castles aren’t exactly a part of our daily life.

We arrived in the town of Cheverny, parked and followed the signs towards the chateau.  On our way, we spotted the famed dogs!!!  There are a hundred hunting beagles kept at Cheverny, each with the letter V shaved into their right shank.  They were in a fenced in area and thrilled to see us, jumping and barking for joy.  We took some video and photographs, when suddenly a man approached us and told us we were in a private area.  Oops.

We were able to see the dogs again later in their kennel, but we were super glad for the initial glimpse of them, even though we apparently weren’t supposed to be there.

Finally arriving at Cheverny, we got the ticket that gave us the whole nine yards - chateau, a little electric car and boat ride, and a visit to the exhibit about TinTin - the hero of a comic series that had been based on Cheverny. 

Cheverny was a pretty neat chateau to explore, and they had lego displays in some of the rooms, which albeit being a little weird was an interesting way to spice up a super old castle.  It was also fascinating that the family who owns it still lives in a portion of the chateau, while hundreds of thousands of tourists flock through the other part of the chateau on a daily basis.  It hasn't even been closed on a single day in years, except for when the current owner got married there.



After we wandered through all the rooms, we headed to our electric boat and car ride where we got the inside scoop on all the different types of trees on the estate (From firs to elephant feet) and how large the estate of Cheverny actually is.   Then we wandered through the labyrinth garden maze (I love those things even though Mom's always sure we're never going to find our way out) and had tea and snack time (the below picture of the large macaron I consumed can speak for itself).  Finally, we headed into the interactive display of 'Adventures of Tin Tin'.  Unfortunately, most of the comic strips were written in French, but it gave mom a chance to practice her reading skills, and it was pretty cool to walk through it, and see how the author had been inspired enough by Cheverny to base a whole series of comic books on it (and later a TV show).  We finally left town with a couple of croissants in hand and headed to Tours to get ready for the marathon.