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.

Chocolate and things

I would like to say that I haven't blogged in a while because I've been SO BUSY, but that would basically be a dirty lie. Yes, obviously I'm settling in to the new job, but the truth is in the evenings I find myself with almost *too* much time on my hands. Sure, when I was getting home at 8.30 pm after being out of the house for nearly 14 hours, I dreamed of having more time to myself in the evenings, being able to relax instead of rushing to cook dinner and then fall into bed - and trust me, I'm not complaining that things have changed - but turns out I kind of adjusted to not having any spare time. So going from that to having a solid 4 hours or so till bedtime, with no social life to fill them with, is a bit of a shock. So I know, I know, the answer is to throw myself in to finding new activities to fill my time (particularly before I readjust to a life of comparative leisure). I should be getting out there and meeting people, taking a class, whatever. And yes, I SHOULD do that, but there's always a fight between the part of me that is a bit bored and lonely and the part of me that really would rather just lounge around in my PJs than do something daunting like going to a meet-up where I don't know anyone. I'm hoping when the summer break is over I can start up some language classes... That gives me a couple of months to pluck up the resolve to get out there, at any rate.

So things are ticking over. Nothing much exciting to report for the moment, although my sister's coming to Brussels this weekend, and with any luck this hot, sunny weather will stick around for it. I joined the library, which I'm pleased about since it had been years since I was a member of a library and that always makes me feel guilty (support your libraries BEFORE they're threatened with closure, people! By going there and borrowing things, not by tweeting about how awesome you think libraries are), especially since there's actually a decent selection of English books in the central branch.

Here's a few old(ish) photos from the camera, and then I'll introduce Jules' and my inaugural chocolate dégustation, mmm!

Me, Caro and Liz at Vitiloire

And at Caro's place

I feel this is representative of the way I look a lot of the time

The Tours monster claims another victim

Rosé and strawberries on the balcony with Bob

Our view of the fireworks for Luxembourg's fête nationale. Over the top of a 5-storey building, people. Tsk

So, when moving to Belgium, you'd be crazy not to sample some of their finest frites and chocolates (probably not together). And I suppose beer and waffles too, if you're that way inclined. (I am not inclined to beer, I am kind of to waffles, but they're probably not a treat I'd cross the street for if there was chocolate on my side of the street.) In an attempt to class things up and justify eating a ton of chocolate, Jules and I staged the first of hopefully many chocolate dégustations together.

Our first chocolatier was Mary, recommended in the "Secret Brussels" book my old colleagues gave me as a leaving present. The book claimed that their shop on Rue Royale was recommended as one of the 1000 places to see before you die. I was expecting ornate chandeliers, crystals, velvet, whatever. I actually can't remember what it looked like and didn't take any photos, but as far as places to see before you die go, the shop itself was evidently a bit meh. But that's not the important part, the important part is how did it taste?

We originally planned to buy 5 * 2 chocolates, but ended up getting six since it was so hard to pick. Plus we got an almond praline each thrown in for free, which was a nice surprise. The 12 (14) chocolates came to 10.50€, which seemed reasonable, although I suppose each chocolate is pretty expensive if you really think about it. After some discussion of how to rate the chocolates (Jules was rating them vis à vis each other, whereas I couldn't quite decide whether to go with that idea or try to rate them against some sort of platonic ideal), it was down to business.

Our 12 contenders line up on the grid

Caramel dominoes

Jules - 5
Gwan - 4
We started with the one I would rate as my least favourite, which is always a good way to go. I thought it was too runny and not caramelly enough, although Jules thought it was fun sucking the caramel out of the crunchy shell.

Milk chocolate truffle

Jules - 6
Gwan - 7

I thought these tasted a bit like they were flavoured with raspberry liqueur - "not bad, but unexpected".

"Gianduja with a fancy name I forget but starts with A"

Jules - 9
Gwan - 8.5

High scores from both of us, but then I do always like a gianduja (who doesn't?). I noted its nice smooth filling and that I drooled a bit while eating it. Not sure if that's the chocolate's fault.

Dark chocolate lady 2 mousse 48% bitter

Jules - 3
Gwan - 7

Opinions divided on this one. Jules thought these were "really boring". He thought maybe he just needed a rest before continuing on, so I called him a chocolate baby. I thought they had a nice cocoa-y aftertaste and the consistency was more like what I expected the truffle to be, not really "moussey". I'd like to try one of the darker ladies. Extra points for the pretty picture (matches my plate!)

Raspberry

Jules - 8
Gwan - 9

This one was my favourite - I love raspberries! It was a dark, smooth chocolate ganache centre flavoured with raspberry, rather than a raspberry-coulis-type affair. Yum.

Manon hazelnut praline

Jules - 9
Gwan - 7.5

I described these as "unsubstantial", but Jules disagreed, describing them as light but soft and smooth, with a moussey texture. I thought the flavour was nice, but I think of a praline as being a bit denser, whereas this was more like a light cream. An extra point for the whole hazelnut though.

All gone, so sad

It was actually a lot of chocolate for one sitting, and I say that as someone who can put away her fair share. Overall, they were nice, but I don't know if I'd go back. I mean, I might, I really like chocolate, but it wasn't an experience that made me think "oh no, I'm going to be blowing my whole pay cheque on Mary" (heh heh). But nor did I think we'd stumbed into a yucky, over-priced tourist trap. We'll just have to keep looking for Brussels' best chocolates!