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.

Madrid: A hit and a miss

The rest of our time in Madrid was principally taken up with visits to two more museums, one of which I very much enjoyed; the other, not. The one I liked was the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the name of which is impossible to remember/spell, but which is otherwise very good. Formerly a private collection (the mind boggles), it ranges across eight centuries of (mostly) European art.

My favourite work. I noted that this was by "Chasnyk", but I now have my doubts since a Google Image search for "Chasnyk artist" just brings up hundreds of pictures of fighting troll figurines

The rest of his oeuvre?

Jesus and Mary had a bad case of elephantiasis of the head. I have a story about that, but this is a family show 

Ghost foetuses!

Portrait after portrait of the Hapsburgs, and this was the only one which properly showed the famous "Hapsburg jaw" (I think Jules was quite glad because then I finally stopped going on about it)

A twin for my Belle Ferronière!

Death's totally copping a feel

This guy is right between Jesus and another guy on the cross, but it's still all about him. He's just so dandy!

After the TB museum, we grabbed some delicious churros and hot chocolate (as featured in a Buzzfeed list of the world's best hot chocolate that I conveniently happened to see while we were in Madrid) and walked to the other side of Madrid to check out an Egyptian temple recommended by my sister's colleague. Not a reconstruction of an Egyptian temple, but an actual temple dating from the second century BC. It was gifted by Egypt to Spain to say thank you for Spanish help to preserve the temples of Abu Simbel (which are probably more impressive than the temple they gave away, I'm guessing).

Hanging out on the Gran Via. This is actually from another day, I didn't change for the stroll

Not that it's not pretty, and in a nice location, but it's quite small

The view from nearby

The line was quite long, and understandably they don't let a ton of people in at once, so we didn't go inside, but it was cool to see anyway.

The abortion expo was closed when we walked past. Pity, I'd like to have found out how to go about feeding an oddly muscular-bummed baby to a crocodile

Stop, churro time! As you can see, you get a loooot of churros for your buck

On Sunday evening, we headed to Casa 9 restaurant, which had a ton of glowing reviews on TripAdvisor, was too busy to fit us in on Saturday night, and was well worth the trip. We enquired about the menu when booking, since my sister eats fish but not meat, and were told that they couldn't tell us what was on the menu since the chef went to the market each day to get fresh ingredients, but that there would be something she could eat. A special daily menu fresh from the market? Sign us up please!

"Cow ham"

The 19.95 price you see there actually covered an entrée, main and dessert, plus water for the table, a glass of wine and coffee. *And*, since I don't drink coffee, I asked for another glass of wine at the end of the meal, assuming they'd charge for it, but they threw it in instead of the coffee. Now you might think at that price, it'd be cheap and nasty. Far from it, it was so delicious, and I think none of us got exactly the same menu, but everyone was really happy with their food. Plus the waiters were super friendly, even pointing us to another (also good) restaurant the night before when they were booked up. If you're heading to Madrid, definitely give it a go!

Pre-dinner cocktails

From a highlight to a lowlight, our last day was spent at the Reina Sofia museum. Basically we went there to see Picasso's Guernica, which is about the only half-interesting thing in the place. Every piece of art (almost all Spanish, from what I could see) we saw in there was grey and brown, it was filled with groups of LOUD children, made worse by the echoing acoustics, and the whole place is huge and maze-like even by the high standards of museums. We only did one floor before we had to meet up with my parents to say goodbye as they were heading to the airport before us (sniff) and I refused to go back in. I'm not usually one to say I hate a museum, but boy did I hate this one. Worst. Museum. Ever. It's blimming lucky it has Guernica, because otherwise I'm convinced you couldn't pay people to go inside.

It was a relief to escape back into the sunshine and stroll back to our apartment via the lovely (and huge) Buen Retiro park, home of (amongst other things), the beautiful Crystal Palace:

Looked less like a glorified greenhouse in person

Now with white van

The view from the Crystal Palace steps (you couldn't go in)

And then it was time to go home... Other than the Reina Sofia, obviously, I really enjoyed Madrid. The food was amazing, it was relatively inexpensive (especially with Mum and Dad footing the bill, haha), the weather was great and there was a ton to see and do. If you've never thought of visiting, I would put it on the list!

Gute Fahrt!

I have some busy times coming up in October, so I need to tell you about last month's trip to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). I had been wanting to go for ages, even before moving to Brussels, ever since I somehow found out that this year was the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne's death in Aachen, in 814, and there were major exhibitions planned to commemorate this fact. Some strategic planning was required: the exhibitions basically ran over the summer months, which are obviously the worst times to go anywhere if you don't want it to be overcrowded and full of children. So we picked mid-September, after the peak of the season and a week before the exhibitions closed, on a weekend where there was no F1. Even so, it turned out to be extremely busy. Even in this special anniversary year, who'd have thought that Aachen and Charlemagne would be such a drawcard?

Aachen cathedral seen from inside the town hall

Ahahaha, gute fahrt! One of us laughed a great deal to see this on a biscuit; the other one speaks German. But even he laughed a bit, come on, it says gute fahrt right on it.

We set out relatively early on Saturday morning for the drive to Aachen, and after dropping our bags at the hotel, headed straight for the first of three linked exhibition venues, in the cathedral treasury. It was pretty cramped in there and you had to queue up and jostle about to try and see anything, but there really were some neat things. If nothing else, it was amazing to think of these things lasting for more than 1200 years (although some of the "so-called" and "supposed" caveats cast a healthy amount of doubt on whether all the relics were actually associated with Charlemagne). The exhibition brought together items from the cathedral treasury (either still there or that had been there in the past), which had belonged to the cathedral in the age of Charlemagne, and items supposedly taken out of Charlemagne's grave. (Seems a bit disrespectful.) So lots and lots of fancy reliquaries, primarily.

This made me laugh: those tiny bits representing "St Stephen's Purse" shown in the photograph

A nail from the purse. Oooh

A reliquary of Charlemagne's head, wearing his crown (which you can't see)

Reliquary with Charlemagne's arm bone

High five! It took so long to get this photo

An Antique tomb in which Charlemagne is believed to have been buried

We thought it was fairly crowded when we were in there, but we felt better when we came out and saw that there was a huge line just to get in. Early birds caught the worm! Talking of worms, it was time for lunch, and we ended up at a quick service restaurant called Hanswurst on the main square. It turned out to be surprisingly tasty (someone on Trip Advisor even hails it as the "best sausage in Germany"), but the best thing about Hanswurst turned out to be that they called everything Hans. HansJules had to wait to be called to the HansCounter to get his HansWurst and HansKnife and HansFork, etc. You probably had to be there, but for the rest of the weekend, everything was "Hans" something.

AND Hanswurst gives you the power of levitation

You weren't allowed to take photos in the other two exhibitions, at the town hall and the new Charlemagne centre, so I can just offer up this one photo of the town hall ceiling, which I include here out of spite:

Why spite? Because I took this as soon as I came in, before I even knew photos weren't allowed, and the security guard came up and told me (not impolitely) that not only couldn't you take photos, but I had to DELETE the photo I already took! What he didn't know was that I took two, so here's the first one that escaped his wrath. I also took a photo pretending to be a woodcarving of Charlemagne, because that seemed to be permissible:

The town hall exhibition was about 'places of power', and out of the three was the most focused on giving a historical overview - specifically about how and why Charlemagne established his court at Aachen. I'm sure it was very interesting, but oh my god, I've seriously never been so hot in my life. I'm not really sure if it was actually very hot in there or I was just literally having a melt-down, because no-one else seemed to be that fussed, but I was like dripping with sweat, I felt like I was going to faint or be sick, and I may have shouted at Jules until he took his sweater off because I couldn't understand how he was wearing a hoodie while I was dying. So I'm afraid we only did a quick loop around the room (also too many people in it) before I had to get some fresh air (and an icecream).

When I was sufficiently soothed by the power of icecream (Jules says not to expect icecream every time I have a tantrum, booo!), we went to the third exhibition, in the Charlemagne centre. This one was focused on Carolingian art, including illuminated manuscripts, carvings, and gold objects. Thankfully, this one was quite a bit quieter, dark and fairly peaceful, so I didn't freak out. There was still a bit of a wait to peer in to each glass cabinet, but it was nice to see these beautiful old books.

Unsurprisingly, that was enough exhibitionism for the day, and we headed to the hotel room to relax and freshen up before dinner, at the One and Only, just across from our hotel. Coincidentally, it was our six-monthaversary, so it was nice to have a great meal in a nice restaurant. I had a goat's cheese starter in an unusual lemony sauce, followed by some perfectly-cooked, moist, tender pork with an awesome purple potato mash, and a chocolate mousse in creme anglaise sauce. It was all super tasty, even if Jules "forgot" his pin number and I had to pay (insert angry cat emoticon here) (just kidding).

Dessert!