After seeing the gallery, we headed downstairs to the kitchens.
I wondered (upstairs and downstairs!) how much of the stuff displayed was original.... If I were Catherine de Medici, and I moved into a place from which I'd ousted my late husband's mistress, would I keep her bed, etc?
Not a chance. To quote the movie Office Space: Set it on fire........
So I wonder. We'll hope the stuff is all appropriate to the period, at least.
In the kitchens.
I like the reflection on the ceiling.....
I can't decide if this is cool or creepy.
Bread oven, complete with the sort of baskets in which the bread might have baked.
I mentioned that Catherine de Medici ousted Diane de Poitiers, and took over Chenonceau. This was Catherine's bedroom.
All in all, my daughter and I agreed that we were more interested in the outdoor aspects of chateaux than the interiors. The details of tapestries and hangings and fancy furniture do not float our boats.
So we weren't too sad to have a limited time inside.
Lots of Very Big flower arrangements. I expect they may well have had something similar, back in Diane and Catherine's day, at least in the summertime....
Love the floor...... (It was much straighter than this, really. This is camera distortion....)
This is one of the double front doors to the chateau. (note scaffolding right outside)
Walking back down this pleasant avenue.
Beginning of Digression.
Walking away, thinking about all of this, I really can't feel that it is healthy for anyone when such a huge proportion of resources are in the hands of such a few people. Not good for those people, to think they have the right to behave as they choose, regardless of others, and certainly not good for the people at the other end of the spectrum who have no resources and who were mere cannon fodder.......
I'm sure this is equally true now.
Graduated income tax? Bring it. No one "needs" more than ... what shall we say ... $1,000,000? ... in annual income. Let the rest of their "earnings" go to the public good, rather than to further accumulation of wealth and power.....
End of Digression.
On our way to le Clos Lucé, we passed some homes that were carved out of the living rock. Our mini-bus slowed, briefly, and I was able to snap this through the opposite-side window of the van.
The signs say "private property." Yet another place's insides I'd like to have visited!
We have now reached le Clos Lucé.
Unfortunately, no pics were allowed inside. Models have been built to showcase many of Leonardo's inventions, and the builders of said models think they have a copyright on them.
It was a much more ... homey ... sort of place than Chenonceau, which was all about Grand and Imposing and Impressive.
I really wanted to take pics of the very nice display of quotes from Leonardo's writing. The quotes were painted on glass, which was framed but not backed. The light through the glass left shadows of the quotes on the walls behind the quotes themselves ... very effective presentation, I thought. And I liked some of the quotes, too.
These pics were taken after we left the building.
It looks to me like these houses might have inside-the-cliff components.....
Amboise was another royal chateau. This shot was taken from the garden at le Clos Lucé; you can see they weren't too far apart. They say that there was a secret passageway underground between the two, which allowed Francis I, who owned Amboise at the time, to visit Leonardo whenever he liked.
Looking back up at le Clos Lucé.
Its grounds at have large models of some of Leonardo's inventions. This is his idea for a helicopter.
It rotates, just as he intended it to do. This baby went round and round (slowly).....
See my daughter's take on this lovely morning (including a video clip of the revolving baby) here.
We would have liked to have more time to wander the grounds, but that wasn't in the cards.
On our way back to Tours.
We were glad to have the guide to ourselves for a bit -- we asked her about things like the amount of new construction in Tours, and it was she who told us that over 60% of the city had been destroyed in the war, and she who mentioned the strategic importance of the Loire as a north/south divider of France.
As with everything, there are positives and negatives about tours. It's nice to go directly to your desired location(s), and it's very nice to have the commentary telling you what you are seeing and/or what you will see.
On the other hand, you are entirely on someone else's schedule.
We could have spent many more hours at Chenonceau, and at le Clos Lucé. Each had extensive grounds that would have been interesting to explore, particularly le Clos Lucé, with all the big, approachable models of Leonardo's inventions.....
The others in our party had booked a full day, and saw three more chateaux in the afternoon! We were just as glad to have decided against that whirlwind itinerary.
In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.
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