Blois, France
(written 5/3/2006 08:47 CET in Sarlat, France)
We were off for bit of a wander around town after our amazing dinner the night before, looking at another stock pile of old buildings and of course Liz found the patisserie!
Soon though we pushed on to take in some of the Loire's famous attractions - the crazy châteaus that were build by various insanely rich people quite a while back. The main one we visited was
Château de Chambord, not far from Blois. This was build by François I as a hunting lodge for the nearby forest we drove through to get there.
Some hunting lodge.
Again we found wandering the grounds to be more satisfying than a long expensive room by room tour, so just entertained ourselves with thoughts of owning such a place and asking people around for a beer and a barbie.
Most of the rest of the afternoon we spent attempting to follow a map through the wine growing region, but finding it horribly inaccurate, poorly signposted and when we did find places they were closed anyway.
We called it quits after a while and headed south to Chatellerault for the night - a nothing town with a very helpful tourist office who pointed us to an
adequate hotel just off the main square.