The staycation is over!

We had a lazy few days after my return, partly due to all the transportation strikes and gas shortages. We saw Christophe Maé in Paris on the 20th. He was great! Apart from that, we ventured out a few times (to go to the gym and see a couple English movies at the cinema – The Social Network and Wall Street 2). Other than that, I spent 70% of my waking hours in my bathrobe, eating Leonidas and catching up on American tv. (It didn’t make for an inspiring blog post). These might be my last weeks of unemployment (more to come soon!) so one must take advantage.

We managed to fill the car up and decided to take a trip to The Loire to drink some wine and see some chateaux. It was an ambitious 2 days, but was a great getaway. The Loire is beautiful, especially this time of year. And there are a TON of chateaux (more than 300) out there. This is why. There is such a thing as too many chateaux in two days, so we only checked out a few.

The Chateau de Chenonceau (Henry II) was really cool, especially seeing how it was built over the river, that every room was filled with fresh flowers (and an appropriate nod to Halloween with a pumpkin/gourd display) AND that you got to check out the large kitchens in the basement of the castle.

After noticing we only had half a tank of gas left and that almost every gas station we passed was closed due to being out of fuel, we found a station and waited 45 min to fill – a maximum of €30/car, lest we run out while trying to get home. According to the newspaper I read this morning, only a dozen or so out of 126 stations in the Loire had gas yesterday.

We decided to spend the night in Le Chateau de Sept Tours, just outside of Tours.

This is Francois I’s “weekend” (and hunting) palace, Chambord.

Another highlight in the Loire was the excellent white wine from Amboise and Vouvray. I loved being able to walk into a winery and sample everything. Our suitcase came back quite a bit heavier.