We left our hotel in Paris nice and early in anticipation of traffic and people congestion in the metro. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not so until Martin pointed out it is in actual fact a Saturday. Strange how time and days goes by now without my recognition. It shows that routines and schedule of our normal daily activity really does influence our behavior and memory.
The metro took us to another intercity metro station where we activated our eurorail pass for the first time. We have brought an eight days in two months France and Spain pass, from now onwards this will pay for the big intercity trips.
Us at the station. The new Trio!
Our next trip takes us into Loire Valley, homeland of Chateau or as I like to call them, giant houses. First stop, Blois.
We got into a little dilemma when we got off the train, none of the people in the ticket office spoke any English! As it is a small town, there was no information desk at the station either. We could not find our way to our hotel as we had no map with us.
With this experience we have a travelers tip for you.
If in a foreign country where you are unable to communicate, either bring a talking translator machine as Martin has, or ask the local hotels. At worst, even non english speaking hotels will have local maps available.
We made it to our hotel by midday, something to note with travel in Europe is that most hotel receptions closes for lunch. We could not check in but they did allow us to leave our backpacks there. Our Hotel La Renassance
We left our packs and ventured out for lunch, it was much more affordable compared to Paris, being the capital the cost is just unavoidably more expensive.
Our lunch
Bois is a quaint town in the the Loire Valley in the Chateau region. It is a small town that has one of the famous chateau of Loire. The Chateau royal Bois.
It is a building over time, first built in the medieval 13th century with additional wings expanding it over history, there is different architecture designs for each part of the wings.
Some famous resident of this chateau includes Francois I and Catherine de Medici.
Something of interest throughout the building was the statues often depicted war scenes or hunting scenes, graphical displays of violence for an everyday ornament on the mantle is quite startling for me. The medieval period is a time that has very different thoughts to our own.
Next to the chateau was the Masion de Magic.
I was really looking forward to this as the information desk said there was a magic show as well as a museum that is quite spectacular.
Regretfully this was not so. I fell asleep half way through the show and the museum took us less than 10 mins before we left.
The only attractive feature to me was the dragons that appear on the hour on the front of the building, but that is free for all. I think Blois is really an interim town for those who wishes to visit the bigger chateaux such as Chambord or Chenonceau.
A brighter note, there was a wine tasting shop right next to the museum, we found a terrific Chardonnay to go with dinner.
As our travel plans will not allow us to attend Mass in the morning, we found a church to attend Saturday Virgil.
This is the Cathedral St-Louis
The priest was very welcoming but unfortunately spoke not a word of English. It was very comical to watch Martin who also spoke not a word of French trying to communicate!
As we were leaving Martin punched in his little translator to ask for directions from an elderly parishioner, after he tried to give directions in French and failed to get the message across, he lead us there. Very friendly old man!
We brought some bread, Camembert and selected hams. We had a nice little feast in our room that night!
I forgot to mention, when we booked we booked a triple room, however they gave us instead of three singles, a double and single. So poor Martin was made to sleep on the floor!
It pays to email ahead to check if in doubt as it appears such booking terms may differ country to country.
Oh, a special thanks to the hotel next to the train station in Saint Pierre-Des-Corps which provided the free internet for me to post this blog!
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Hi Cecilia, Thanks for the encouragement and support! we are doing very well. Will continue to post as often as I can!
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