The next day we were making preparations to get the car. Driving in France was not my idea at all. In fact, I wasn’t sure at first why we had to. It looked like trains went almost everywhere we wanted to go (and they did) and after our experience with the drivers in Paris I was very nervous.
It's always strange to set out into a new country, especially in a car, and even more so when you are sick. My poor Dad was sick the whole time, and I was hit pretty hard myself. I've never been sick on a vacation like this before. Luckily, the medications we found knocked it out of me pretty quick.
My dad was
much more nervous than I because he was driving – sick no less. Thankfully, our guides had given us a
navigational system to take and this little computer would be so essential for
the many days to come.
I might have been our “navigator” on this trip, but
honestly I just took cues from the system.
I cannot recommend enough how crucial it is to have such a thing if you
are driving in France. Street names seem
to change on a whim every few blocks, and finding signs is hard if not impossible. There are a lot of round-a-bouts, and it's very
easy to get turned around and go the wrong way as we did the second we tried to
second guess the GPS. Thankfully, the
thing realized how stupid we were and immediately re-calculated us back on
track.
We drove through beautiful and picturesquely pastoral
countrysides with farms and quaint villages all around. It is here that I think I understand the need
for a car. With trains and mass transit,
you have to fumble with times and luggage, then haul yourself back to a central
location. With a car, you can take
everything you need with you and aren’t beholden to anyone’s schedule but your
own. We got a closer look at life in
France by traveling in a car than we would have otherwise.
Our first destination was Chambord, a huge castle built by
Francis I as a sort of hunting castle.
As my first official castle, it was quite impressive on the outside and
inside, and very traditional. Looking at
it from the grounds, I could see white towers and blue roofs, with tall spires
of carvings rising up to the sky.
Inside, it was all huge and cavernous rooms with large fireplaces and a
very thick smell of wood smoke. Such
places get extremely cold, and these fireplaces were essential for warmth (no
fires were lit when we were there).
The castle benefits from another unusual benefactor, our
friend Leonardo Da Vinci. He designed
many of the towers and features, including a double spiral staircase in the
center. The design was such that a
legion could be going up the stairs while another was going down at the same
time. Looking at the stairway, you
realize it’s actually a helix, a very ingenious design.
There were other things to see, like ancient tapestries and
carvings. The more “modern” rooms dated
from Louis XIV – XVI and I could see the impression of Versailles style in
them.
On the whole, my first trip to an official castle was an
interesting experience. This was
certainly not a Disney castle, but a MAN'S castle built by men to do manly
things. Interestingly, later kings
would make it a little more inviting, but on the whole it was a very sparse and
Spartan place. After having a delicious
burger at the restaurant outside the castle, we got back to the car and
traveled through forested roads to our destination of Ambois.
Our lodging in Ambois was probably one of the nicest we had
on the trip. We were located at the Le
Cos d’Ambois which was an old chateau converted in the 90’s to a hotel. I had a beautiful and very spacious room
overlooking a large lawn area and a pool.
Too bad I was sick and didn’t bring a swimsuit, because it was fairly
warm. Dad had to sweat a bit trying to
get into the place because the driveway was only slightly more wide than the
car. Even making the turn was a sharp
k-shaped affair with cars honking behind us.
Insurance is horribly expensive for renting in France, so naturally Dad
didn’t want to pay a thousand dollars (yes that’s how much it would have
been).
I will say this of the Le Cos d’Ambois, as beautiful as the
hotel is, their food is deplorable. We
had the worst meal of our trip there, and I won’t go into any detail other than
to say it was like chewing old socks.
The old adage we’d been told was when in doubt, order an omelet while in
France. The chef there couldn't even do
eggs because they were burnt to a crisp.
This was a first, and the only time in France we were met with such a problem, but it's not a trip to some foreign country without at least one bad meal. With a day where I saw my first real castle, beautiful countrysides and a lovely town, to have a bad meal as the only complaint is a lovely diversion.
