1 hundred dogs, 1 hundred dogs... 1 hundred dogs!

(Does anyone else remember 2 Stupid Dogs, or just me?)

2016 was my 7th trip to the Vitiloire wine festival in Tours and Jules's 3rd. Every year since the first, I've managed to forestall a trip to Chenonceau by promising "maybe next year". This year, I couldn't get out of it any more, so we duly made a detour to the château on our way to Tours.

Don't get me wrong, Chenonceau is one of the fabled châteaux of the Loire that people dream their whole lives of visiting. It's just this was my fourth visit (trip one, two and three), so you can fairly count it crossed off the old bucket list. But Jules had never been, so finally we went along to tick it off his list too.
 

They have actually opened up a new part of the château since my last trip - the second story of the bridge across the Loire that you can see in the photo above. It had quite a lot more information on the history of the château through the ages, so trip not wasted. My favourite sign in the new exhibition:

"Hey, fish! Your mum smells like cabbage!"

Other than that, it's fair to say we did a relatively whirlwind tour, trying to dodge the inevitable coach-loads of Russian and Chinese tourists.

From Chenonceau, it was on to the main event in Tours. Our group this year was a little smaller, with my sister and my friend Caroline having moved to New Zealand (in separate incidents), but my sisters' friends have got such a taste for it that several of them came along anyway! I didn't go quite as crazy as the year before (since we still had a few bottles left over), but we acquitted ourselves pretty well. 

Ready for wine

Me and the British (slash Kiwi) contingent

Mel very proud of her wine purchases and her wine boy who had to run around after her carrying them

As you can see, the weather for the festival was pretty good, but by Sunday evening, the heavens had opened, and on Monday it rained solidly the entire way home across France and Belgium. I don't know if it registered with people outside France, but that week saw flooding across big areas of the country. We were lucky to get home, because the next day I saw friends on facebook posting pictures of some of the motorways we travelled home on completely washed out.

So it wasn't the greatest weather to go and do a partially outdoor activity, but we forged ahead with our plans to visit another of the dwindling list of major châteaux of the Loire I haven't yet been to. Namely, Cheverny, the inspiration behind Marlinspike Hall in the Tintin comics.

Walking in the footsteps of Tintin (and Snowy!)

Hergé lopped off the wings on the sides to make it a bit less grand

I promptly forgot pretty much everything about the inside of the château, but looking back through my photos, it has some pretty sumptuous rooms. It's not huge, but I'd rather a small but pretty château than a huge empty one, (looking at you, Palais des Papes). 

The hall was covered in vignettes from Don Quixote

Apart from the Tintin collection (assiduously promoted in the gift shop and also in an exhibition that we didn't visit since you had to pay extra), the big attraction of Cheverny is seeing the feeding of the more than one hundred hunting dogs which live there. We got in position fairly early, but even with the rain we had to stand way over on one side, so I imagine it gets really crowded on a nice day in the middle of summer. As it was, I got constantly dripped on by the umbrella of the woman next to me, but at least we got a reasonable view of the dogs.

There was a lot of waiting around, and then more time spent herding the dogs out of the yard to clean it, spreading the food, and then the master made them all line up patiently for a while before they were allowed to eat. The dogs were pretty well-behaved up to that point, and then when they got the signal to go eat, it was a total scrum. They all climbed over each other to get to the food, some even doing a comical handstand over the backs of the other dogs to make sure they got some. Which was just as well, since in under a minute, all the meat was gone. There was at least one thin and presumably timid dog who got fed separately to fatten her up, but otherwise, you snooze you lose.

The dogs and their master before feeding time

My wet sleeve and I go in for a pat

Waiting to get fed (video doesn't work on mobile, sadly)

 As usual, it was a great blend of visiting new and familiar tourist attractions, catching up with friends, and - of course - drinking a lot of wine. I especially like the new little tradition we've had the last couple of years of stopping off somewhere on the way to/from Tours. It really turns a long weekend into a proper mini holiday.

Not Chambored

I found my camera cable, hurrah. And thus can bring you many photos from our trip to the Loire Valley a couple of weeks ago. It was, of course, our annual pilgrimage to Vitiloire. I won't bore you with all the details of Vitiloire - there was a lot of wine, a lot of food, and a lot of giggles. We went to the cheese restaurant and the guinguette, and I got raspberry financiers from my favourite bakery. We caught up with my sister, my friends, and my sister's friends, and a good time was had by all. We drank too much, stayed out too late, and still dragged ourselves up the next day for the train back to London/more Vitiloire, as the case may be.

I didn't visit any castles with Jules last year - he originally hadn't planned on coming along at all - but this year I thought it would be a bit silly for him to go all the way to the Loire Valley again and not see a single château. So, because it was kind of on the way from Brussels, and more importantly, because I'd never been, we decided to go to Chambord.

I've probably been to most of the major Loire châteaux now and several of the minor ones - Chenonceau, Villandry, Ussé, Azay, Blois, Chinon, Langeais, Loches, etc., but Chambord had long been on the list without quite managing to get there. It's the biggest and one of the most iconic of the châteaux, but not that easy to get to. There was a direct bus in summer, but I never wanted to go in summer,with all the tourists. Otherwise it was some sort of fiddly train/bus/faff which, as I recall, only allowed you to see the château in about an hour or you were stuck there for three or four hours. Picky, I know, but you can afford to be when you live somewhere and think you'll be able to go see it any time you want.

So anyway, it was a good opportunity to go while we had a car, and once Jules stopped sulking that I wouldn't go to Chenonceau with him (kidding), I'm sure he thought so too.

Chenonceau is undeniably gorgeous, but Chambord had a real fairytale frisson to it. It's not that it looks like a Disney castle, but walking towards it, seeing the towers first come into view, it does seem like something magical out of a storybook. You feel like Peer Gynt should be playing or something. We were lucky enough to have the only really nice weather of the weekend while we were there as well. Everything's that little bit more special with bright blue skies instead of grey on grey.

Behold.... Chambord!

At the back (front?) entrance

It took a long time to get one with the flag fluttering

The courtyard and the famous double-helix staircase, which doesn't look like much, but is fun to go up. Most scholars agree the staircase was designed by Leonardo da Vinci, then living nearby at Amboise.

Old-fashioned mirror selfie in the King's bedroom

I'm not sure whether I should find these taxidermied animals cute, but I kinda do.

Windows in the chapel

Built for François I, his symbols of the ornate letter F and the salamander were everywhere. In the legends of the time, salamanders were meant to be able both to extinguish fire and to spit fire, and throughout the château you see them doing both. This gave rise to François' motto, "I nourish and I extinguish", which sounds like a threat, but supposedly refers to being nourished by the "good fire" of faith and love while extinguishing the "bad fire" of passion and injustice. 

The château is huge - 440 rooms, although not all presumably open - and most of the interior is fairly unremarkable, at least if you've been to your fair share of castles. I loved this space on the second floor though, with an ornate ceiling studded with François' emblems.

This panorama is cool but gives a false sense of the layout - the rooms aren't in a row like they look here

Where Louis XIV liked to sleep

The other great highlight of our visit was getting up on to the roof terraces, which offered lovely views over the surrounding countryside and a close-up look at the fabulous towers. Supposedly, François I wanted the roofline to look like the skyline of Constantinople.

View of the church from the roof

I take too many photos, I know. So hard to choose the best ones. Let's round it off with a little Vitifun.