AZAY le RIDEAU & VILLANDRY

May 28-29, 2005

 

Sunday, May 29, we woke up to a gray day.  We had our traditional breakfast, had our host make reservations for Sunday night, and packed up.

 

We rode more beautiful countryside and green routes into Azay le Rideau.  Don has been doing an excellent job of plotting our routes, using his computer, gps and paper maps.

 


At Azay le Rideau we locked up our bikes and got the audio guides for the chateau and took the tour.  Once again, here is a case of an accountant building too nice a house, and being accused of stealing from the king to finance it.  We accountants had better learn our lesson and not be too pretentious!

 

When we left the chateau we stopped in the town for a yummy omelet lunch and then continued on a little roundabout tour, doubling back along the banks of the Cher to Savonnieres.  There we telephoned our hostess at le Colombier.  She met us on her bicycle at the bridge and guided us onto the island between the Cher and the Loire, and then on to her home, where we will stay the night.

 

Our room is very nice and spacious.  The home is nestled in a bucolic setting on an island, with green fields and trees all around. We can watch Oscar, the pet goat, and Condie, the pet pony, play with each other from our dining room window.

 

That evening we enjoyed an aperitif with our hostess and a friend.  The beverage was a home brewed wine of cherries and l’eprile.  It was sweet and syrupy, but went down easily.  I made a tuna salad for dinner and then we watched a movie, The Notebook, with James Garner and Colleen Dewhurst.  It was a touching story.

VILLANDRY-37510
M. et Mme FAVROLLE-Le Colombier
Tel 02 47 50 02 41 Cell 06 87 16 92 83

<>The next day we visited the chateau at Villandry.  I enjoyed this chateau very much.  It is furnished in the style of the late 1800s rather than medieval style.  The rooms are nicely decorated and give one an idea of what the life of a wealthy family might have been like in that era. 

 

The gardens at this chateau are spectacular.  There is an enormous vegetable garden, with each plot of lettuces, onions, potatoes, etc. set out in attractive geometric patterns, each bordered with little box hedges.  The topiary gardens are styled in patterns of hearts, each set with a different meaning.  I also enjoyed the herb garden, which was bigger than my back yard.  (My herb garden is in a nice little pot).  Every kind of herb imaginable was there.  Enormous climbing roses of every color spread across the garden walls.  These roses were at least 12 feet high and each one was about 20 feet wide.  The bushes were covered with blossoms in pink, red, orange, yellow, peach, and white. The gardens must require a large staff to maintain.  There acres of are topiaries and hedges to trim, thousands of fruit trees to prune, hundreds of thousands of flowers and vegetables to plant and replace all year long.

 


After leaving Villandry we went to the official bike route along the river Loire.  The route is well planned and well marked and it was a very pleasant ride.

 

We stopped briefly at the chateau at Usse.  This is the castle on which the story of Sleeping Beauty was based.  In France the story is called La Belle au Bois Dormant, the Beauty of the Sleeping Woods.  The castle sits high upon a hillside and looks like it came right out of Disneyland.

 

Back to the bike route, which we followed all the way to Avianne, where we stopped to use the internet at the library, and then on to our B&B for the night.