Photos Chenonceau

I am planning to put up a few more, but Blogger isn't playing ball for some reason. Unfortunately, as I think I said, my camera was pretty much done by the time I got to Paris, so there's only a few shots from the Cluny museum, and most of the million pictures I took at Chenonceau came out really badly because of the lack of flash... But anyway... Also will be uploading some photos from the SNOW day and Carnaval soon!



Side view of Chenonceau



I should have uploaded these in a different order - as I was explaining to my Mum the other day, it's hard because you're only working with little thumbnails, and they go up in reverse order i.e. the first one you click goes on the blog first and is thus last as you scroll down the page, whereas of course they are listed in correct chronological order in the computer file. Anyway, point being that you can clearly see here that the tower on the right is a separate building (actually it's the only bit left of a different castle that used to be here), whereas the picture below shows that it all cunningly looks like one building when approached from the front



Side view, so you can see how the castle extends across the Cher



Chenonceau from the front. Scaffolding is, of course, a constant and necessary plague everywhere in Europe, but at least the idea of putting a big photo of the covered-up building over it is a good one



This was the bedroom of the 5 queens or something like that - all their initials are on the ceiling, but don't know who actually slept here... The 5 queens were Catherine de Medici, Mary Queen of Scots and... I think the other 3 were daughters and daughters-in-law of Catherine

Chenonceau & Paris

So, procrastinating on something else I have to do is good news for the blog, so here I am!

To my best recollection, I was up to my day at Chenonceau, a chateau of the Loire Valley 30 minutes from Tours. I have wanted to visit the Loire Valley for ages, so I'm glad to have had an excuse, although I guess ideally I would be doing it floating down the river on a glorious sunny day and waltzing into mysteriously tourist-free castles, rather than the bleak and freezing cold scenario life actually had in store for me. Weren't that many tourists on the plus side, though. Consulting my brochure: Chenonceau was built in the 16th century in the Renaissance style (or the 'modern style' as I assume they referred to it back then), not by the royals but by some dude and his wife.

I think it's known as the Chateau of the Ladies or something (don't *think* I'm making that up) because it has strong connections to the women of the French court. Henri II's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, inherited it from him, but then ceded it to Henri's wife, Catherine de Medici. One fun fact is that the intertwined H and Cs (for Henri and Catherine) that decorate Diane's bedroom can also be read as D for Diane (picture to follow). I read this a couple of years back in a book about Catherine de Medici, so it was fun to see it in real life. Mary Queen of Scots also lived here back before she was Queen of Scots and was the Dauphine/Queen of France.

The best thing about Chenonceau is that it is actually built over the river, as in a bridge with a castle on it, which is pretty damn cool. Sadly, I couldn't figure out how to get to the other side of the river to take photos :( There were people over the other side, but maybe they started over there... There was a lot of scaffolding and so forth happening, so all along the waterfront on my side seemed to be roped off as far as I could see. But anyway, impressive. Also, the interiors were nice and the gardens were bleak and freezing, and that's probably about it for my impressions of Chenonceau.

So, on to Paris on Monday, just for an overnight stay. After a 2 1/2 hour trip on the slow (cheapish) train and depositing my bags (btw, worst directions in the world stupid hostel), I finally made it to the Musée de Cluny aka the National Museum of the Middle Ages. Not that I've attempted to go in the past, I just find it strange that I've been to Paris 3 times before and never gone, considering I am quite the fan of the Middle Ages. It did not disappoint, either. Absolutely crammed with treasures, the highlights being the tapestries, which were the best I've ever seen, soooo well-preserved it's amazing. The most famous are the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which deserve their reputation: http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/homes/home_id20393_u1l2.htm (sorry I'm having issues getting that to work as a proper link... time to take 'basic HTML coding' off my CV muhaha).

I sent that link to my Mum, who commented on their bright colours. The lower portion of the tapestries were actually restored at some point (19th century?), which included redying and tightening up the weave. I assume this is because the lower parts were in reach of grubby hands for 500 years. So now there is a very noticeable colour difference between the restored and unrestored sections - you can see it in the photos. The ironic thing, of course, is that it is the UPPER, unrestored parts, that retain their vivid colours, whereas the restored strip at the bottom has badly faded. Take that, modern technology!

Anyway, I won't blather on too much about the museum, except to say that you should go if you're in Paris. It always makes me sad that there's so much ignorance and negativity about the Middle Ages. Okay, the millionth drippy Madonna with wisened Benjamin Button-esque baby Jesus clutching at her anatomically incorrect bosom does get a bit boring, I'll admit, but the Middle Ages were surprisingly full of colour and humour and life along with the dirt and sermons and craziness (and by the way, the peak years for witch trials were in the Renaissance, not the Middle Ages). I'm not saying I'd want to live back then, or that it's without its flaws, but between wholesale dismissal and romanticised notions of lords and ladies, there must be room for people to appreciate the real Middle Ages as a vibrant and interesting period. Okay, rant over.

The next day, I fit in Sacre Coeur for the first time - it was only 2 minutes' or so walk straight up the hill behind my hostel, and is a very elegant space I must say. Which sounds like an odd decription, damning with faint praise perhaps, but the elegance and fine proportions were what most struck me with Sacre Coeur. Everything seemed to be perfectly thought out as to what would appear framed by which arch if you stood at such-and-such a vantage point...

After that, I went to Sainte Chappelle, which was partly scaffolded, but still filled to the brim with gorgeous stained-glass windows, far more glass than anything else in the upper chapel - 6,458 square feet of it, which is just an astounding figure. I'm bad at visualising numbers like that, but if I imagine it in comparison to the size, say, of a Parisian apartment... huge! I joined a guided tour in French, led by an enthusiastic PhD student from the Sorbonne, and I think I understood most of what he had to say, even though it was rather rapid-fire. Salient points include that two-thirds of the upper windows are original (i.e. 13th century - some of them are now in the Musée Cluny for some reason btw), none of the windows in the lower chapel are, owing to a flood, there is the oldest wall fresco in Paris (or maybe France, I forget) on one wall, which was covered up and thus survived the flood, and that it was built by King Louis, who later became Saint Louis (and the French seem pretty proud to have had a King who became a Saint, despite being secular and anti-monarchist...).

I visited the Conciergerie as well, since you could get a joint ticket with Sainte Chappelle, which started out as the first palace for the French kings and wound up as a prison under the Ancien Regime and in the Revolutionary period. Poor old Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned there for a couple of months, as was Charlotte Corday, and Robespierre died there. Apparently it was a pretty grim place back in the day. One room had lists of all the victims of the Terror on the walls, with their occupations, which was illuminating. Many were listed as 'ex-nobles' or 'ex-priests', although a couple were just 'nobles', which seems weird - surely the idea is that the Revolution stripped them of their nobility? Anyway, that makes sense, but many of the others were functionaries or just normal people like servants, wig-makers or shop-keepers - maybe a little bit too chummy with the aristocrats they provisioned, but who knows really... All this sort of thing makes me think I should brush up on my French history. I did a whole paper on the French Revolution at uni, but I must admit to being decidedly hazy on the details now... Anyway, the Conciergerie was only of moderate interest, but worth throwing in if you're going to Sainte Chappelle anyway.

After that, it was time for lunch, mostly because it was just freezing cold, colder than England at Christmas, due to the biting wind (oh and it snowed! yay!) so I didn't fancy strolling about or anything and didn't have time for more tourist activities. So I had a nice 3 course set menu meal at an Italian place (I forgot to say, but had a great lunch in Tours, featuring duck confit mmmm although they insist on calling it 'preserved duck' on English menus, which kind of gives me the creeps and makes me not want to know in what manner it is preserved. But so damn tasty!) And then it was time to pick up my bags from the hostel and make my way to Charles de Gaulle, thankfully unimpeded either by strikes on the RER or snow issues.

PS it snowed today in Nice - excited photos to follow. PPS Sorry my posts are tooooo long I know

Tours photos

I took like a million billion pictures in the Tours Cathedral, then another million billion in the Chateau de Chenonceau (to be uploaded later) and then hardly any in Paris cos my stupid battery was running out and stupid me didn't bring the charger. Installment number one of photos, will try to blog the rest of the trip and upload more soonish.



I think this is the Palais de Justice in Tours, but might be something else. Maybe the Hotel de Ville, actually?



Medieval buildings in Tours' old town



Arrggh! Monster!



There was a goat in the kebab shop!! I'm not sure if it had been a very good little goat and was being taken on an outing, or a very bad little goat and being shown where it would end up if it didn't mend its naughty ways.
PS Check out the short, shoes & socks and hairy leg combo. Classy and seasonally inappropriate!



Fountain in Place Jean Jaurès. There's a Rue Jean Jaurès in Nice... Wikipedia, who dat? A: A socialist leader and pacifist who was assassinated at the beginning of WWI. There are a number of these French historical figures who seem to get a street or something named after them in every city. I've seen my good mate Félix Faure pop up elsewhere too, to give one example.



This cracked me up. You probably can't see, but it's a photo of a sculpture and the sign below says something like 'Donated by M. XXX, sculpteur, Tours'. Like, did he donate the actual sculpture, or (as this picture makes it look), did he just take a photo of a sculpture and donate that, because if so, well-played sir. In St Martin's Basilica, Tours.



Are these flying buttresses? They look pretty cool in any case



The front of the cathedral in Tours



The back of the cathedral - anyone else confused as to why you can't see the spires from the front side? Pretty sure they're way taller...



Someone getting attacked by a spade in one of the medieval stained-glass windows



Dude on the right is totally coming on to the shocked saint on the left. As my Mum pointed out, he's either trying to lure him to the above spading, or that was revenge for having his advances rejected...



Light from the windows hitting the pillars, so pretty!



Jesus totally doing a 'woohoo' about the resurrection



Window



Cathedral interior



The ceiling of the... apse? Nave? Whatevs










Altar in front of windows



One of the 19th Century windows



This might be 12th Century, it might be 14th, I don't really remember. But it's one of the old ones

Night train to Tours

Blog title in honour of the follow-up to the Great Train Bazaar by Paul Theroux, which I have been reading and the title of which I have forgotten. The journey being all, according to Theroux, whose son I am intermittently in love with when I see his bumbling self on the telly.

Anyway, I left Nice on Thursday night, on which, for accuracy's sake, I should probably call the night train to Paris, cos that's where it stopped. I settled on the train due to scheduling conflicts (stupid work) - if I'd taken a plane I would have arrived in Paris about 11 pm and had the stress of finding a hostel at night and then paying for it. It was a bit cheaper than flight + hostel + train to Tours would have been, but train travel here ain't that cheap. Anyway, I was in a first-class 4-bed women-only cabin, and it was not half bad actually. The berths were a reasonable size and fairly comfortable. They won points from the get-go by giving me a free bottle of water, a simple gesture guaranteed to elevate my happy bunny points by at least 20. If life was like a marathon with people thrusting bottles of water at me every km or so, I would be a happy girl indeed. Minus the running, obviously. The train was reasonably quiet, the only major drawbacks being that it was too hot and the blinds didn't close all the way to, leaving a strip of light at eye-level that flashed away with the motion of the train. I managed to sleep though, pretty lightly and not all night, but enough for me not to feel a complete wreck when we pulled into Paris at about 7.15 in the morning - this is more than I can say for many a night in my own bed, so can't complain.

After transiting across Paris and waiting for a little bit, it was train no. 2 to St. Pierre-les-Corps, just outside Tours, then train no. 3 to Tours proper, arriving about 10.30. My hostel - hotel, rather - was 1 minute from the train station and was bliss! a double bed in a private room. The landlady was lovvvvely and let me check in and shower at 12 pm - I didn't have a shower of my own and the shared bathroom was under repair during the day, so she even let me use the private bathroom of another (unoccupied) room. Très reconnaissante.

To fill the time between arrival and check-in, I went to Tours Cathedral, which is just lovely. As always, the façade was covered with scaffolding, and quite a bit of the interior was blocked off, but it was still amazing. It's probably the lightest cathedral I've been in in Europe (to my recollection, at least). I was lucky to have the only skerrick of sunshine I've seen so far on this trip while I was touring the cathedral, which streamed in through the lovely old stained glass windows and left multi-coloured splotches on the stone pillars inside. Talking of the stained glass, it was amawing, ranging from the 12th or 13th century to the 20th. And I had the place almost to myself, with only the occasionally loud bangings of the workmen to break the spell.

On Friday night I met up with some people off couchsurfing for a few drinks, which was nice. I didn't fancy spending Friday night alone, so it was great to meet some friendly locals and speak French all night, even if it was at times rather incomprehensible. (WHY the conversation turned to what to do on a French carousel - try to grab 'Mickey Mouse's tail' from the ceiling to receive a free ride) I will never know, but I suppose now I'm prepared should the occasion arrive.)

The centre for nightlife was in the old medieval town, where I also went the next day to wander about and check out the city. Some nice old medieval houses, and the remnants of a huge basilica to St Martin and its 19th-century reincarnation were the highlights. My fav part of the story of St Martin, Bishop of Tours way back in the day, like in the 4th century, was that (according to a wall plaque in the basilica), the people of Tours somehow tricked him into coming to their city and pretty much forced him to become their bishop. Doesn't really sound like the best way to get on God's side, but I suppose it all worked out in the end. His shrine is downstairs in the crypt and was (along with the nun-filled church upstairs) quite unusual in being full of extremely prayerful people. It's kind of sad when one can be surprised that a church is being used for prayer instead of solely by godless tourists, but there it is. The ceiling and the walls were covered with dedicatory plaques, many of them from soldiers and citizens giving thanks to St Martin for coming through various French wars intact. The tomb itself was relatively large and lavish, but housed only a small reliquary containing a thigh bone or something like that, which I believe was scavenged from the general destruction of the French Revolution, although it could be one of the many other upheavals that France has known, perhaps the wars of religion in the 16th century.

I spent another two nights in Tours, and visited the chateau of Chenonceau, one of the chateaux of the Loire Valley (although it's actually built on the Cher), and then caught an early train this morning to Paris, where I visited the Musée de Cluny and where I'm spending the night before heading home to Nice tomorrow evening. The rest of my exciting adventures will have to await another day, however, because my hour at the internet café is almost up...

Vence & Cagnes photos

Photos from Vence & Cagnes-sur-Mer (as requested :D). They didn't come out that great... hard to capture the atmosphere of dark, narrow alleys and lots of stone buildings, but, well, enjoy anyway I hope



The Matisse chapel in Vence - simple outside and in



Doorway in the old town, Vence. Maybe you can't tell, but it was significantly shorter than I am



Medieval house in Vence - note the overhanging upper storey



Nativity scene in the 11th-12th century Vence cathedral. I included this a) to demonstrate to my Mum that shock! horror! the laws of Epiphany have been disobeyed b) because it's supposed to be a model of the old town and c) because (you can't really see, but trust me) there is a sign saying that the nativity scene is under video surveillance. That's right, they thought about it and decided that the Chagall mosaic, the Roman sarcophagus and the Carolingian sculpted plaques could look after themselves, but the nativity MUST be protected.



Street in old Vence - hmmm, upon reflection this maybe looks pretty much exactly the same as a photo from Cagnes I uploaded below...



View of Vence from the bus



View *from* Vence of some hills



Alley in the medieval city, Cagnes. LOOK at that old ceiling, amazing!



This just looked too 'year in Provence-y' not to photograph - *cough* all shops in France are this picturesque and old-worldy



The Grimaldi Chateau in Cagnes



A faded (effaced?) crest on a wall next to the chateau



Vine-covered houses in Cagnes' old town



A reminder that the "villages perchés" - perched villages - of the area were built up on the hilltops in a (not always successful) attempt to resist Saracen raids



Street in the medieval bourg at Cagnes



The city wall in the Bourg Médiéval at Cagnes sur Mer



Renoir's garden with the old city in the background



Close up of the view of the old city framed by olive branches



Renoir's house with one of 'his' sculptures outside



A reproduction of one of Renoir's paintings (displayed inside) in front of the spot depicted

Vence & Cagnes-sur-Mer

As part of my continuing efforts to get out of the house and actually take advantage of living in the French Riveria, a place I'm well aware is the stuff that dreams are made on for many people, I went to Vence last Wednesday and Cagnes-sur-Mer (10 points to anyone who knows how to pronounce that btw, 'cos I'm buggered if I do) on Saturday. And I am blogging them together because a) it makes my life easier, and b) they were pretty similar experiences, both featuring a medieval old town and a visit to an artistic spot.

So, Vence first. (By the by, Vence has a great website if anyone's interested in a virtual tour.) The medieval town centre is charming, still enclosed in its original (? well, if not original, then very old) wall and full of those fabulous terrace-style stone houses that almost meld into the walls. As my friend said when we visited Peille, there's basically just one house in the entire town, it's as if they've just been hewn out of the rock or something. And the wee little doorways, smaller than me, so cute! Many of the back alleys were deserted, and I could just about picture myself back in the Middle Ages. Coincidentally, I've been reading a book about life in a French medieval town recently, so that helps. One feature sure to bring on a coup de coeur as far as I'm concerned were the fountains dispensing 'famous' (possibly stretching the meaning of the word there, but oh well) local spring water so I could fill up my water bottle for free. Dunno about in summer, but eminently drinkable in the winter.

After wandering about in the town I set off a bit out of town to see a chapel entirely conceived by Matisse. Absolutely everything, down to the candelabra and the priests' chasubles, is to Matisse's designs, and all original. Matisse considered it his masterpiece. It is very bijou and very simple and I may have considered the 3.50 entry fee a bit steep, were it not for the lovely lady who, unsolicited, gave me my own private guided tour in French (I was the only person in there at the time, which is always lovely in itself). She gave me all the facts, pointed out every detail and iota of symbolism, answered my questions and quizzed me on the stations of the cross (there were 14 of them painted on the walls - aren't there usually only 12? This was a question I didn't dare pose lest I be thrown out). So that pleased me enough to justify the charge, and I must say, it was a peaceful, reflective place, and the care that Matisse put into every tiny detail and the meaning of it all was quite impressive.

So that was Vence. The old town in Cagnes was more or less the same, except it wasn't walled and was on the top of a big hill, crowned by a pretty impressive chunky castle once belonging to the Grimaldis (who used to control a pretty impressive swathe of land in what is now France and Italy, but now, of course, are only managing to hold on to Monaco by their fingertips). Annoyingly, the bus set me down absolutely miles away, not even in Cagnes proper. I had looked up the journey plan on the bus website, and it assured me that the Renoir museum (where I was going to go first) was pretty far out of town between these two bus stops. I managed to miss the first bus stop, but got off at the next about a minute up the road and reasoned that I should walk back towards the first and I would see a sign - nothing. Eventually I found an area map that revealed that the Renoir museum (and the town centre and the old town) were ages away and would be quite complicated to find. I walked for about 40 minutes into town (extra-annoyingly, along the bus route) before I decided that I would head towards the old town first, as it was getting on for lunchtime and I knew the Renoir museum was closed from 12-2. The old town also had the distinct advantage of being visible on the horizon (disadvantages: up that big hill by an unknown route). As luck would hae it, I managed eventually to stumble across the central bus hub where I had seen (on the way back from Vence) that there was a free shuttle bus up to the old city, so up I went for some wandering and very nice it was too.

After that (and after purchasing an américain from a guy who, it turned out, spent 3 months in NZ in 2002 as a waiter during the America's Cup), I walked to the Renoir museum, which was up some twisty turny roads out of town but thankfully signposted. The américain came back to haunt me cos it was absolutely massive and I didn't know what to do with it, so left it in its paper carrier bag on the ground at the gates of the museum, intending to collect it on the way out (didn't think clutching half a giant greasy sandwich stuffed with chicken and chips would be a great look for an art gallery) and when I emerged, someone had thrown it away. Which was fine, except I was very embarrassed that someone had had to clean up said greasy sandwich on my account.

Anyway, the museum consists of the house & grounds where Renoir spent his last years. Fabulous setting - lovely olive-grove style gardens with a view of the medieval hilltop city, and from inside the house there are some great sea-views. The sea was probably as far away as it is from my house, but whereas I have a fingernail's sliver on the horizon, this place had some proper sea. There were also (as is trumpeted in all the promotional literature) 8 original Renoir works, all (I think) painted in residence. Some of them were views of the gardens etc. which were nice to see in situ. It also holds practically all of Renoir's sculptures, although to be honest, I think one could quibble as to whether or not they are in fact "Renoir's" sculptures. By this stage, you see, his arthritis was too bad to sculpt, so he had an assistant who actually sculpted the things. Which begs the question, what was Renoir's contribution? This was never actually explained in detail. If he made the preparatory drawings and his helper did all the sculpting, then I say that they are sculptures 'after drawings by Renoir' and not sculptures by Renoir at all, but perhaps there's more to it... In any case, I thought they were quite ugly sculptures, especially the mouths which were all sort of unpleasantly open, not gaping, but forced into uncomfortable slits like the top of a piggy bank or something.

Anyway, there were also paintings by some of Renoir's mates who came and stayed with him (no-one I'd ever heard of, although some of them were not half bad at all), original furniture, and various artefacts from his life, such as his painting wheelchair in his reconstructed studio. It was small, but I quite enjoyed it. I spent some time sitting in the gardens, it being warm enough in this part of the world to do so (in a coat) in winter - in summer, I imagine, it would be even nicer, although probably I would not have had the luxury of being alone with the view.

Anyway, it was hometime after that, and anyone who's made it thus far is probably heaving a sigh of relief to hear it! Saturday night I had a lovely night out, including being asked for my number by some guy on the street (and not at drunk o'clock either, at about 8.30) which was gratifying to the old ego, although probably points should be deducted since it was an Italian doing the asking, and I believe they're widely considerd to be incorrigible...) Okay, I will shut up now, this has gotten far too long!

The French girl's guide to winter dressing

Acquire a pair of calf- or knee-length boots, any colour is fine. Tuck your jeans into them. Now put on a plain, generic t-shirt. Anything will do - no-one will ever see your bottommost layer unless you're in the throes of passion in a particularly well-heated room. Possibly not even then, I haven't run all the appropriate tests. Add a cardigan, preferably grey. Now a heavy winter coat. Top with a chunky scarf looped in some sort of an artlessly stylish fashion that I can't replicate even though I'm pretty sure I loop my scarf along the same basic principles. If the temperature has dropped below the 'critical' zone of 15 degrees, you are entirely justified in adding a knitted hat and/or gloves to complete the ensemble.

The French boy's guide to winter dressing:
As above, except substitute shoes for boots and don't tuck your jeans into them. Ditch the cardigan - you, sir, are manly enough to face the cold with only a peacoat and a chunky scarf, also cunningly looped. If you want a bit of Fonz-esque je ne sais quoi, you may choose a leather jacket. For rebel chic, go with a ski jacket and beanie, and lose the scarf (too bourgeois). If at all possible, add a jaunty messenger bag to your outfit. A headband is an optional - but stylish - extra.

The old French man's guide to winter dressing:
Put on anything and add a flat cap and a querulous stare. Congratulations, you are now an old French man.

The old French woman's guide to winter dressing:
Put on weight. You starved yourself for 60 years, you deserve this.