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France Trip, April, 2008
Wednesday, April 9
I didn't sleep well at all last night. When we got up, there was only lukewarm water coming from the tap, so I had to just do a sponge bath. Turns out the chateau was having heating and hot water problems. Count Guy said the basement heater system was a machine within a machine, "much like little nested Russian dolls." Before we arrived, they had just replaced the innermost system, and today had to change the next layer out. "Next time they come out," said Count Guy, "they'll be changing the whole chateau." (Fill in a French accent at will.)
Count Guy and Countess Marnie de Vanssay of Chateau de la Barre
We left to drive to Blois to visit Jerome and Anne Galpin, who are our European distributors for Rubbn'Repair. Their family owns a sports car dealership and vintage and contemporary rally racecars which they rent out to "gentleman racecar drivers." Their company is called "Team FJ." We toured their facility (lots of cool cars, very clean garage) and then went to lunch with them. They're a very nice couple. They took us to an extremely nice, very French restaurant, where you could tell the staff knew them very well.
We talked until nearly 4:00 pm, then left to go tour the Chateau de Chambord, which was about 13 km away. What a huge, beautiful, utterly extravagant chateau. Blois was where the kings lived until the capitol was moved to Paris later on, so there are many enormous royal chateaus in the area.
The dramatic entrance to Chambord, a royal chateau not far from Blois
Chambord was built to be a royal "hunting lodge," with over 400 rooms and 250 fireplaces. Quite a hunting lodge! At times the royal retinue of courtiers equaled the size of a large French town. To move them all around must've been quite an undertaking.
Just a little hunting lodge in the country...
Chambord had spectacular grounds. A tree-lined lane many kilometers long led up to the front of the chateau. The 2445 hectares of forested property surrounding the chateau are full of deer and wild boar for hunting.
On the way back to Chateau de la Barre, we decided to just do a light dinner, so we stopped and picked up some meat, cheese, bread and apples. We shopped at E.LeClerc, which was like a Super WalMart, only bigger. The sign said "Hyper E.LeClerc." They had everything from food to large appliances. We ate our dinner in the billiard room of the chateau, because the antique furniture in our room would not "stand up well to picnicking."
Flowers were everywhere, despite the cold weather. It was trying desperately
to be spring, but the temperatures felt more like February.
The weather remains very cold and wet. Today was miserable for standing outside for very long. Along our drives, we have seen a lot of pheasants -- beautiful colors. There are also a lot of doves, pigeons, crows, and cuckoo birds. We've also seen long-tailed, light-colored hawks several times.