Castle Visits...FINALLY

Last weekend was our IES-sponsored visit to five of the many Loire valley castles. After the weekend, I was convinced that I need a moat—or at least a tower. And I definitely need a huge garden.

Although we often weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside of the castles, we profited from the great care the French take to keep all these castles looking the way they did five hundred years ago. They almost seem inhabitable. The first castle we visited was de Montgeoffroy. As far as castles go, this one was quite disappointing. The estate is privately owned so we weren’t allowed any pictures at all. And I was quite surprised to see how run down the place is. Not much was very well taken care of. The outside, however, was still impressive. But the best was yet to come for sure. However, none of the other castles housed a dog that all the American students could worship. I'd say this was a pretty good day for this particular dog.

After Montgeoffroy, we visited d’Azay-le-Rideau. The city holds the name of the castle, but until the eighteenth century the town called itself “Azay-le-Brûle.” “Azay the Burned.” The town earned this name after the massacre of 350 of Charles VII’s soldiers in 1418. Over the years, the castle has become the pride of many people who have worked to restore the castle to its original grandeur. The castle now sits on the water and towers proudly in the middle of a quiet clearing—no one would ever know a burning castle once disturbed this tranquil setting as hundreds of men were slaughtered.

My favorite—and less morbid castle—was Villandry. Never in my life have I seen something so beautiful. Upon entering the castle grounds, one may have a tendency to think to herself—eh, this castle kind of looks like the last one and then…..BAM five hundred huge gardens hit you in the face. Apparently, it wasn’t always like this. At the beginning of the twentieth century, some rich guy named Joachim Carvallo decided he wanted to restore the gardens to their original grandeur like they must have been during the Renaissance. There were two reasons for having these huge gardens. One, they were used for cooking purposes and two (the more obvious), for decoration. From what I counted, there are four different gardens. There may be more that I didn’t get around to seeing. Yes, Villandry IS that big. “The Garden of Love” represents four different types of love: tender love, tragic love, adulterous love, and passionate love.

The garden of music is pretty simple-in comparison to the others, but it's still fantastic. It’s quite green with a couple of fountains and sprouts of small purple flowers. I half expected the shrubbery to be cut in treble clefs, but that wasn't the case. But, I was not disappointed in the least. The jets of water are supposed to represent music in some way—not really sure how.

The simple garden is quite simple. It's a good place to just stop and smell the roses (This is Caitlyn. She likes flowers). This is the one practical garden in the whole place. It has cooking herbs, aromatic plants and medicinal herbs—quite an impressive collection. And finally, the garden of crosses—the cross of Languedoc, Pays Basque, and Malta. The colors of the flowers change with the seasons—I guess I’ll just have to come back to see it again!

After these three castles and lots of walking and history, we stopped at a hotel in Tours for the night where I ate the most delicious chocolate mousse EVER! I’m serious this time. It was the best. Unfortunately, this is indeed when I realized I forgot my camera charger. So the next day when we would be visiting two more castles, pictures would be sparse.

We started Sunday at Amboise in the city of Tours. Whoever built this castle really knew what they were doing as far as defense goes—they built it on top of a hill. After catching my breath and cursing cobblestone-roaded hills, I was finally able to appreciate, not only how well-fortified this place must have been, but also the incredible view of Tours.

There’s a ton of history behind this castle that I won’t bother to bore you with, but if you’re interested I would suggest doing a little Googling! A few famous people bedded down in this place—for example, Leonardo de Vinci and Charles VIII. As far as the interiors of castles go, this one was the most impressive. The entire inside of the castle was like an art museum for Renaissance art. Talk about feeling small and insignificant…but at least I got to hang out with Leonardo de Vinci.

Finally, our last castle of the weekend was Chenonceau. Architecturally, Chenonceau blows the other castles out of the water. Like the last castle, this one has a ton of history as well that I won’t bore you with too much. And sadly, this is when my camera chose to take a tragic death and I couldn’t get many pictures of Chenonceau. This proved to be not so bad since the castle was under construction when we arrived and all of my pictures would have been marred with that anyway. I just wish I could have gotten pictures of the arches over the water. The castle stretches across the river with four stone arches that the castle is built over—quite an architectural feat.

Since this is one of the France’s biggest tourist attractions, the castle is very accessible. Most of the castle is open with its original artifacts for people to see—which made me kick myself even more for forgetting my charger. I do have to say, that one room did stick with me. The room of Louise de Lorraine was like walking in to a horror movie. After her husband Henry III was assassinated, she went a little over the religious edge. She became sort of a recluse, painted her entire room black and dedicated herself to prayer. Everything except the fireplace is black in the room. There’s a large statue of Jesus with a crown of thorns and a shrine dedicated to prayer. I don’t know if it was the all black walls and ceiling or the creepy religious symbols, but that room seriously gave me the creeps. That was not OK.

Anyways, that was the finish of a fantastic weekend of castle sightseeing and I returned home completely exhausted and infatuated with France. I think I’m ready to make out my Christmas list…. ;)