The Loire Valley

Bonjour,

After the crazy week in Paris our next mission was to go and pick-up our rental car that we have for 3 months! It's freaky because we kind of buy it for that time then sell it back. It's called a Eurolease. It's a Puegot and it's dark grey. Our cousins one is different and it's light grey.

 

It also has a lady that speaks to us inside it and we have called her "darl" because every time she tells us a new direction we all say "thanks Darl". She keeps very calm even when we go the wrong way! She sounds like Lady Gaga but with no singing.

 

We headed to the Loire Valley to a Eco-camp site called Alicourts, resort by nature. We stayed in a cabin but if you were very fancy or brave you could stay in a real tree house! It was too far from the pool for us. Plus snakes and plus it would have been to hard to get up all of our bags.

 

It was a cool place with huge playgrounds, waterslides, pools, supermarkets, lake, disco, fishing, kids club, dancing and much more. Every night there was a kids disco and two girls would dress up in different costumes each night. We learnt some new French disco songs with actions! One of the girls was our favourite and she had a diamond in her tooth. Cool.

 

The weather was hotter than Paris but a bit cloudy at first. Then it was beautiful. We visited a lot of castles while we were there because it 66 in the region. We got to see 4 but that was enough we think as they were quite busy and hot work!

 

Chambord:

This is the grandest and most famous of all the castles. It was built by King Frances I as a country retreat. It woul have taken him angers to get there from Paris traveling in his horse by I guess that's normal if you are a king. You can live anywhere and do what you want. It has fancy rooms which smelt very old but I guess that was because it is. It had double helix staircases in the middle and it was completely symmetrical and extremely grand. Leonardo Da Vinci even stayed there as he was a good friend of the king. It had moat and the biggest garden We have ever seen. Big as Sumner we think.

 

Villandry:

It's better known for its gardens than castle but we got to see both. The garden was so amazing and it took hours to get around it. It was humongous. It had a maze, playground, vege garden, fancy gardens, moats, swan lakes and tree lined paths. We think we would not like to have to weed it because it would take all year and then you would have to start all over again. Even the veges were planted in perfect shapes.

 

Usse:

Or the sleeping beauty castle! It was pretty but we decided not to go inside. Instead we took photos outside it. We were a bit sick of being in the hot car and traveling around castles. They were cool but we liked the water slides at our camp a little bit better. This castle was very pretty with lots of turrets and levels. We could imagine repunzel sleeping there or another princess as it was very glamorous and very old.

 

Clos Luce

This was a funny old house at the top of a hill in a very busy town called Amboise. It was a very important place because that was where Leonardo Da Vinci spent his last 6 years and died there too! He was a very important man because he painted the Mona Lisa and also invented so many things. In the bottom of the house they had a museum with real life models of the this he dreamt up in his head. We could not believe that he thought of these things and some are still used today, like the life buoy. He invented the helicopter, the tank, the first car, dykes (for canals), ball bearings, underwater breathing apparatus, and a parachute. He was amazing and it was freaky (Vi's favourite word) to think he thought of all this so long ago.

 

We also got told off by a crazy French lady who looked like a chihuahua because we used her cafe toilet. She yelled at Violet so Mummy used some English words to reply to her. Luckily she did not understand Mummy. We did and got the giggles. She won't mess with us anymore!

 

After an amazing week and our first real taste of France we are excited to head to our next destination of Roanne. It was about a 4 hour drive away and we decided to stop off at a very famous and beautiful town called Vezelay. It's all built on top of a hill. Very old and lots of religious people come to see the old church. We went inside it and had to be quiet as real life nuns were inside praying.

 

We had a very cool lunch in a cave resturant that served cheese shaved into thin strips and shaped like a flower. They served the best hot chocolate we have ever had!

 

See you in Roanne!

 

Love from Isla and Violet

 

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