This weekend API took us on a trip to the Loire valley, named after France's longest river, la Loire, which runs through it. The region pretty much right in the middle of France, and it's about 3 hours from Paris by bus.
La Loire is known for its beautiful countryside and abundance of châteaux so API took us to 3 different famous châteaux.
On Saturday we went to to the Château de Chenonceau which is known for being especially beautiful and its "feminine" appearance. The castle housed various queens and aristocrats and its developpement and construction were overseen by women which is why it looks different than the traditional masculine architecture of the time period. Its gardens are amazing and the inside is really cool too. It's probably my favorite castle besides Versailles.
After our tour of the castle, we got back on the bus and drove for about an hour until we reached Tours, the city where we'd be staying the night in a hotel. Tours is largest city in the region with about 140,000 people living inside the city itself and about 550,000 living in the metropolitan area; it's also known as a university city so it has a large student population. First we dropped our luggage off at the hotel then API took us to go on a little touristic train ride through the city. The ride made it difficult to take good pictures but it was kind of cool anyway. The ride only lasted about an hour, and after that we were completely free for the rest of the day. So I just spent my free time walking around, exploring shops and restaurants, and taking pictures of the city with a couple friends.
Here are some pictures of Chenonceau:
Pictures from Tours:
On Sunday we started by boarding the bus with all of our luggage because we wouldn't be returning to the hotel. Our first destination was Amboise where we were going to see the Château d'Amboise. Honestly this part of the trip was the worst and it was pretty boring. Compared to some other châteaux this one wasn't very impressive (that could be because about 75% of the castle was destroyed and not much remains) and the guide we had was very boring. But one cool part about it was we got to see the chapel where Leonardo da Vinci is buried.
After the tour of hell was over, we had a couple hours of free time to eat lunch and explore the town of Amboise. First we decided to go check out the out-door markets, which are always cool. Things were really expensive though so I didn't buy anything. We got hungry though so we decided to go find some place for lunch before we had to get back on the bus.
Pictures of Amboise:
Our last stop before returning to Paris was the Château de Chambord, which was much larger and more impressive than the one in Amboise. Instead of risking another tedious tour, we decided to get audioguides instead. We programmed them in French and we walked around freely and saw what we wanted to see. We ended up touring most of the castle anyways, but it was definitely nice to be able to do it at our own pace and skip rooms that weren't very interesting. The visit lasted a couple hours and then it was time to head back to Paris. Because Chambord is closer to Paris than Chenonceaux, it was only 2 hours back instead of the 3 it took us on Sat.
Here are the last of the pictures:
Overall the trip was pretty good, but some parts were very tedious and long winded which made some parts hard to get through and tiring. I'm really glad I got to see the Château de Chenonceau though because it was amazing.
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