An American in Paris!: Castles, part I!

This weekend my program had its first weekend excursion into another part of France. We spent Friday and Saturday exploring the Loire valley, and I have tons of pictures so I'll have to divide it up into a few parts. I'll start by going through and explaining each photo and put them into context, etc. Enjoy!

This was where we spent Friday night, in the city of Tours! It was a nice break from Paris (I'd call it a "city" only in comparison to Schaghticoke, in reality it was a pretty small place), but we didn't do much exploring so there's not much to tell. Dinner was amazing though, we got a 3 course meal for 13.40 euro, and wine was only one euro for a glass!

Just a balcony in Tours, most of the windows here have a pretty little balcony like that it's very endearing.

This is the fountain that was in the square near our hotel. Most of the squares here have some sort of small fountain like this, I always wonder how old they must be!

A random building in Tours (it's for rent guys, someone should get on that!). I just liked it because the design looked very German to me, I haven't seen a single building in this style in Paris.

A wall in the little town outside our first castle...

First view of the castle...

And this is it - Chambord! My first thought when I saw this is that it looks exactly like Downton Abbey, for those of you who will appreciate that reference. Our tour guide explained that this castle is a good example of the medieval style; it has a lot of balconies and turrets where defenders can stand and pour hot water or shoot arrows on potential attackers. In the event of a real attack this tactic would be absolutely crucial, especially since there are so many large windows that make the castle unnecessarily vulnerable. But in reality the French kings really only used this castle as a temporary residence anyway, since it was designed as a (rather large) hunting lodge.

These are some shots of the castle grounds.

This is unsurprisingly a pretty popular wedding destination - on the day we were there, the weather was perfect and I saw at least 2 (possibly 3) brides getting their wedding photos taken.

Some more shots of the outside of the castle and its many balconies!

I snapped a quick picture of this sign because my friends and I always joke about how bad the French are at translating things. They love writing signs in French with an English version below, but sometimes the translations are just a little bit off. I saw so many signs this weekend that translated "entrée" as "way in" instead of just going with the obvious, simpler choice of "entrance." Also, for example, a lot of signs in Paris tend to struggle with possessives. In the French language you wouldn't say "Caroline's dog" you would say "the dog of Caroline." So since the French don't understand how to properly use apostrophes to represent possession, there are a lot of random apostrophes in weird places... I've seen multiple places advertising "brunch's every sunday!"

Chambord is known for its famous spiral staircases. This is a shot of the giant, central staircase inside.

The ceilings in this castle were incredible, this is a shot of the wooden beams.

The first room we saw was where the royal guards used to stay. You can tell from this picture and the one below how important hunting was.

This is the view from the center of the spiral staircase, it's so complex it makes me dizzy.

Some images of the bedrooms...

The beds are so fancy, but tiny!

This gorgeous hallway is full of windows, there was so much sunlight.

More beds that are absurdly small but have absurdly large curtains. At night you would close them to keep some of the heat in.

There were a bunch of giant trunks like this, all I could think about was how many of those poofy ballgowns could fit in each one. How do you even go about packing dresses and corsets??

I can't imagine what it would be like to hang out in a room like this and casually sip some tea.

This is a statue of one of the queens who spent some time at Chambord. I don't remember which one exactly, but I do remember that the sign says something along the lines of "I am the queen." Short and sweet, I like it.

This crown was casually just sitting in the back corner of the chapel.

This is the chapel! You can't really tell, but it's a fairly large room. In the US this would be big enough to count as a church, but France is the land of huge cathedrals so the large size isn't too big for a castle. And since they're rich it wasn't even in a separate building, they just built the chapel right into the top floor of their castle.

Yup, this is a hallway full of antlers. Go big or go home.

The next three pictures show one of the coolest parts of the castle. Francois I was the king who spent the most time at the castle, so he decided to have his initial and the mascot of his house (the salamander in the photo below) installed throughout the building. The third photo is of a ceiling that was completely covered in these carvings.

This is me hanging out on a balcony. I'm pretty cool.

View of the grounds from the top of the castle. Who takes care of these lawns??

Everything is so intricately decorated, I want to know how long it took just to carve this one small adornment.

There's that royal salamander again! This time, it's carved into a door because apparently no one had anything better to do.

Spiral staircases are the bane of my existence, it's pretty much impossible to walk up one without tripping at least once.

Another view of the spiral staircase!

In the background you can see the river, it continues on and becomes the castle's moat.

This is perhaps the most famous image of Chambord - the spiral staircase that's actually technically OUTSIDE the castle. It's hard to tell, but in reality there are a few of them, and they live in an interior courtyard, presumably so random peasants couldn't just climb up into the castle.