The Loire Valley, Episode I

On Thursday and Friday of our week-long bus tour, we visited some of the most famous castles of the beautiful Loire Valley.

Thursday we began at Azay-le-Rideau, which is what we have dubbed "princess-style architecture" to a tee.

It's got a moat, which of course is just for show. The castles of the Loire Valley weren't strategic defensive holds, but rather more like the Bel Air of 16th century France. The château does have a great open-air internal staircase that's good for gazing longingly out of, pining for a distant and inaccessible lover: just the thing good medieval (okay, actually universally speaking, all) love stories are made of.
But all that ooey-gooey romantic stuff made Ryan want to throw himself off a bridge. Wink.
Don't worry, I saved him.

From Azay-le-Rideau we went to Chenonceau, probably the most beautiful château we visited. It was originally built for Diane de Poitiers, the favorite (which, being interpreted, means "mistress") of King Henry II. The part castle is actually a bridge, and its long formal halls, called galeries, stretch out over the water.
From the outside:
And from the inside of the gallery:
Doesn't look like much, especially from within, but this was actually a hospital during the Second World War. Imagine this long hall full of hospital beds, bloodied and bandaged soldiers, and bustling Red Cross nurses.

In front of the castle we found Snow White's wishing well, which I sang to. No answer. Dang it.

After visiting Chenonceau, we were off to Amboise, which unfortunately there are no photos of--I left Judy's camera on the bus. Oops. Instead, here's a list of cool things about Amboise:

1. Leonardo da Vinci is buried in the chapel at Amboise. He spent the last three years of his life living and working in this part of France, and asked to be buried at the château.
2. This brings me to the second important thing about the château: it supposedly figures, as does Signore da Vinci, in the horribly historically inaccurate but terribly romantic Ever After. Yep, Henri II, who the film is supposed to be about, was born the year da Vinci died rather than learning the ways of love from the Italian innovator as the film shows. Henri also did not marry a peasant, but rather Catherine de Médicis, the cold but very fertile Italian queen who mothered three successive French kings (François II, Charles IX, and Henri III) and one French Queen, the famous Reine Margot of Alexander Dumas' novel and wife of Henri IV, the bearded ex-protestant king who, according to legend, said, "Paris vaut bien une messe" ("Paris is well worth a mass"), abandoning his protestant faith to get the very Catholic throne. (Sorry for the lengthy aside on French history. Back to Ever After) Henri II, if you remember, built Chenonceau for his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who as the proportions of the château indicate, had a bigger place in Henri's heart than his royal wife.