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France Trip, April, 2008
Thursday, April 10
Today we left Chateau de la Barre for Paris. On the way, we stopped in Châteaudun to see the chateau of the "Bastard of Orleans," who was the illegitimate son of Louis of Orleans, the brother of the king of France, Charles VI. Also known as Jean Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans was companion in arms to Joan of Arc and lived in the mid-1400s.
The chateau in Châteaudun
This chateau was impressive because of its multi-aged architecture.
The keep was built in traditional medieval military fashion.
But a few of the spiral staircases were decidedly pre-Renaissance.
And the stones in the stairs were loaded with huge fossils from an even
older time...
The chateau shows four centuries of architecture and includes several marvelous stone spiral staircases. In one staircase, the stone steps were full of huge fossils. The cylindrical keep was built in the 12th century. It was originally entered through a door 10 meters off the ground. Traveling onward, we saw lots of huge windmill farms, much like ones we had seen in Germany last summer.
And speaking of fossils, modern France is trying to replace fossil fuels
with wind energy