France: Part IV

Day 7
Wednesday was our "National Lampoons" day. The kids got us up at 5am so we had plenty of time to wash Brennan's sheets by bucket after a minor bed-wetting, wash the dogs by bucket after they rolled in poop on our morning walk, rig up a line in the RV to dry said sheets, and even take showers ourselves. When I went to avail myself of the campsite facilities I found a co-ed bathroom with tons of showers but no toilets. Except that upon closer inspection some of the showers weren't showers at all... but squat toilets!!! Wow. When in Rome... We finally hit the road only to find out that the exit was blocked due to construction and we had to take some inventive detours to get our rig headed in the right direction. That was about the time Patrick discovered that his watch was off by 2 hours and we weren't really early at all. Argh!



We made it to the town of Montignac where we needed to pick up tickets to see Lasceaux II, the reproduction of the famous Lasceaux Cro-Magnon cave paintings. Despite Rick Steves' promise of a well marked route to ticket sales, we looped through the town a few times with no luck, squeezing down narrow one-way streets in our huge rig and passing the same cafe patrons repeatedly. We finally exited Montignac and re-entered on the other side to check out THOSE one-way streets and bought our tickets for the English language tour. We had some extra time so we parked and strolled through town, which has a river running through it and was very pretty.





We bought some supplies from a bakery,



ate our melting dessert first in the shade of our camper,





and then enjoyed a leisurely lunch of baguette, cheese and pears. Maybe leisurely wasn't such a good idea because somehow time got away from us and we found ourselves rushing to make our tour on time. We did make it and it was well worth the effort. We could not take pictures inside the cave, but the paintings were reproduced using the same materials and methods as the originals and were breathtaking. The original cave is no longer open to tourists as the extra humidity from all those visitors was beginning to aid the growth of mold and degrade the images. The highlight of the tour was when the guide turned out the electric lights and we were able to view the paintings by firelight. The ancient artists had used the contours of the cave to give depth to the animals and they practically looked three dimensional. Another highlight for me was listening to Brennan accurately describe some of the "painting" techniques, i.e. spraying an ochre and saliva mixture through a pipe or out of the mouth. It warmed my heart. The only stress was that we were put in the penalty box, so to speak, when Isla wouldn't stop making noise during the tour. We were asked to move to the front of the group and stand near the exit so that we could leave if she didn't quiet down. There was no way I was leaving early though, and we stuck it out. On our way out of town we stopped to buy some fois gras.





We headed toward the Loire Valley and stopped at a McDonalds for dinner. Shameful, I know! But they had free wireless internet and it ended up being the classiest McDonalds we had ever seen.





We showed up to another closed campsite and spent the night in a town parking lot with other big rigs and the occasional RV. This state of affairs was becoming normal and we no longer had anxiety over the legalities of overnight parking in public lots.

Day 8
After a tasty breakfast of croissants we drove to Chambord castle, which began it's life as a hunting lodge. It was humongous and so much fun to explore. We only saw a fraction of it, which was still plenty.





I used to dream of taking a "castle tour" of Europe. Needless to say this was very exciting for me!





The famous double helix staircase, possibly based on a design by Leonardo da Vinci, allowed people to avoid each other on the stairs.



A rooftop terrace from which to view the hunt.





Patrick and Isla took one strand of the double helix and Brennan and I took the other. It was pretty amusing to view each other through the little windows but never actually meet.



The castle was decorated with tons of salamanders and the letter "F" in honor of Francois I.





Brennan did great with all the walking and we ended up back at the RV for a lunch of pizza baguettes before driving to Amboise. Here is a shot of Bexar and Rocky riding in style.



Amboise saw us strolling around and doing a bit of casual shopping at the end of the business day.



We snagged some ice cream for Brennan right before closing time and bought bread, cheese and some deli dishes for dinner.





We drove to our campsite in Chenonceaux and were pleasantly surprised to find it open! Patrick checked in and was instructed to place his order for fresh bread and pastries to be delivered first thing in the morning. Nice! I let the kids stretch their legs on the playground while Patrick attended to some RV maintenance and then we settled into our site to enjoy this view out our window.



Along with the view, we savored our gourmet dinner of baguette, assorted cheeses, strawberries, a mushroom dish and a potato dish.





It was fantastic! We watched a beautiful pink sunset; the perfect end to our day.