As a day of national strike and demonstrations against the new retirement law was coming, we departed for Normandy. On the way we stopped in Giverny where I had always wanted to visit Monet's gardens. The weather wasn't very friendly and what I was hoping would lead to some amazing pictures ended up pretty bleak. Still it was with great pleasure that I was recognizing painting's scenes after another while walking around the gardens.
Yes my water lilies pond is not that great vs the real thing.
We continued the drive to stop at Omaha beach and la Pointe du Hoc for some D-Day beach experience. I really wanted to take M and Greg there as it is quite a strong historical link between our 2 countries, check. We obviously got rained on heavily as we were returning to the car without any rain-jackets. It wasn't going to be the last time western France would remind us that it actually rains there, no Portland-like sprinkling, actual rain :).
We then drove to Brittany where we had our first stay at a B&B. The old traditional mansion was gorgeous and the comfort beats any luxury hotel. We had a great dinner of crepes and galettes to celebrate properly.
We spent the next day at the Mont Saint-Michel. M&G seemed to enjoy greatly the maze of medieval streets and ramparts as well as the view. I took a panorama of the peninsula just before a storm that is probably my greatest to date (already published here a few posts ago). After getting soaked like never by that storm we headed for a nice strawl on the promenade of Cancale.
We bought some Chouchen to bring back, delicious salted-butter caramels and other typical Brittany delights before stuffing ourselves again with more crepes and galettes ! Our next destination was the Loire Castle area to continue our classical touristic tour of France. We stopped on our way in Vouvray and ended up buying one of the best white wines G&I ever had (Le noyer, semi-dry organic wine from Chateau Moncontour).
Our first castle was Azay-le-rideau and we were gratified with blue skies. The 3 castles we would visit ended up being very different, and this one was certainly the smallest.
We followed up with the visit of Villandry and its magnificent gardens, which became our instant favorite. The interiors were fully furnished and greatly restored, and the gardens require 10 full time gardeners all year round. Pictures are worth hundreds of words so here we are.
This made me want to cook there ;).
All this is a veggie garden, everything edible, I wonder why this appeals to me that much.
Our dinners here were more gastronomic and G experienced for the first time a dinner with too many courses for you to actually want to count. Yum, but after too much gastronomy we started feeling like salad was a good idea :).
We spent the next day visiting Chambord, I had forgotten how crazy this whole thing was, crazy gigantic ridiculous is probably more appropriate.
Some rooms were fully furnished with original interior designs and really represented well the Renaissance luxury and exuberance that Francois the 1st loved so much.
The only roofs as crazy as these are Gaudi's in Barcelona, and the scale is clearly not the same. It was all in all very impressive but we didn't like it anywhere near as Villandry.
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