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I just liked the colours in this photo.
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After leaving Chartres we headed south into the Loire Valley. We drove through amazing back roads with endless fields of sunflowers and hay bales- very picturesque and of course I don't really have any pictures because there aren't generally a lot of places to pull over when you're driving something the size of our beast!
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| Ah the classic "through the windscreen" photo. The dead bugs don't show up as well as I expected. |
Our first stop was to see the Chateau of Chateaudon. The Chateau towers over the town and is one of the first things you see when you are driving in. It has both a 12th and a 14th century part, a grotto and a collection of tapestries.
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| The looming Chateau |
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| The Chateau of Chateaudon |
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| The Tapestries |
From here we headed to the town of Troo. This is one of the regions "cave villages". The caves are built into the local hill, one of the few features in an otherwise very flat landscape. The caves here are interesting in that most of them are actually used as homes, gites (holiday homes) and shops.
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| The french hippie running a shop in this cave made us the best espresso for the princely price of 1 euro. |
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| View of the Loire River and valley from Troo |
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| Another cute cave dwelling |
We stayed the night in a very good municipal campsite in the town of Montoire Sur Le Loir and the next morning we got up bright and early to attend their weekly market. I
love the food markets in France!
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| The Montoire food market. Sans tourists. |
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| So pretty. But some advice about what else to do with radishes (other than salad) would be appreciated! Tout suite! |
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| Our market haul! |
Our next stop was the town of Chinon where we stayed in another lovely Municipal site just across the river from the Forteresse Royale de Chinon, the town's main attraction. The Forteresse was having a "medieval weekend", so in addition to looking around the grounds and buildings we also had the company of people in costumes and the pleasure (?) of a mock medieval battle. Hmmmm.
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| The crepe complete, the french version of a bacon and egg McMuffin. It's really good, although personally I've developed a bit of a taste for the Nutella crepe, where the hot crepe is accompanied by a spoon and a 6L tub of Nutella. They LOVE Nutella over here- weird. |
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| Forteresse royale de Chinon |
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| Chicken wings make an excellent second breakfast apparently. |
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| A church built into the side of the hill. |
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| Part of the original wall which extended from the sides of the Forteresse. |
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| One of the many gorgeous little restaurants. |
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| View of the Loire River from the forteresse. |
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| Yak rides. Why not? |
While we were in Chinon we had dinner at an amazing restaurant, Restaurant L'Ardoise. After a lot of great rustic or bistro style French food it was incredible to have a very modern, fine dining meal. The presentation was gorgeous and everything was very, very tasty. At 27 euro each for an entree, main and dessert we were pretty happy. We were even happier (and fuller) after the complimentary "welcome" dish from the kitchen which was followed by the amuse bouche.
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| The Loire River |
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| The local delicacy that I decided to pass on :( |
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| Our "welcome" dish. The marinated salmon in the middle was amazing. Although tasty I have my reservations about the prawn creme brulee. |
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| Morgan's entree- eggs three ways. |
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| And his main, an amazing piece of duck. All you Masterchef geeks will appreciate the beautifully turned vegetables too! |
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| The desserts we really didn't need! |
So the Loire valley gets a big tick from us!
1 comment:
Radishes: just as they come with butter & salt. yum yum.
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