The Loire

It's almost time to pack up again.  Here are a few random photos, which I will come back to later and expand upon when there is more time.

Cathedral in Vendome.

In Vendome.

Leonardo da Vinci's house ("Clos Luce") in Amboise.

Leonardo's helicopter.

A mechanical lion designed by Leonardo to amuse the king.

Ping pong in the street in Amboise.

Chateau Chaumont, near Blois.

In the stable of Chateau Chaumont.

I'll fill in the gaps when I have a quiet moment!

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Blois

After Amboise, Blois (population 50,000) is the next town up the Loire.  It too has a chateau, but is in in the middle of the town so has no grounds to speak of; just a quadrangle enclosed by its four main wings, each of which is in a distinct architectural style.

Entrance to Chateau de Blois.

The Francois I octagonal staircase, from the courtyard.

The king's bedroom

Ceiling decoration.

Francois was also known as the "Knight King".

Stained glass window.

A griffon in his bathers.

Some tourists looking out a Blois and the Church of St Nicolas.

Blois is a very old town, having been around at least as long ago as 600 AD.  Joan of Arc based herself here when she was preparing to recapture the city of Orleans from the British in the Hundred Years War.  The stone bridge across the Loire was built in the 1700's.

The bridge over the Loire.

A wall of roses in The Rosarie at Blois.

At noon we heard music starting up, and witnessed the bizarre hourly display at the "House of Magic".  Windows opened and five huge dragon's heads emerged.  They waved about and snapped and growled a bit at the watching school kids, then after five minutes disappeared back into the buildings.

The House of Magic

Not quite as convincing as Weta Workshop's dragon in Wellington airport!

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Chateau Chenonceau

Chateau Chenonceau is high up the list of the top ten chateaux you must visit if you come to the Loire, so today we went there.  It is only twenty minutes drive from our accommodation.  It is actually not on the Loire river, but the nearby Cher.

As well as the chateau building itself there are acres of gardens and forests, so the whole estate is quite large.  It is the most-visited chateau in France, after the Palace de Versailles, receiving close to one million visitors each year.

Chateau Chenonceau

The vegetable gardens.

Acres of forest.

Extra colour was provided by these colourful people.

Sue heads into the maze.  Will she ever return?

The chateau itself was built about 1520 on the foundations of an old fortified mill, dating from 100 years earlier.  This is the main part of the structure, on the left in this photo (below).  The bridge across to the other bank was added later, and then the galleries over the bridge in 1560, by Catherine Medici.  Before that King Francis I gave it to his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who was responsible for much of its early development, but when he died his wife Catherine Medici evicted Diane and took over.  So Chateau Chenonceau was very much shaped by powerful women.

The chateau straddles the Cher river.

The desk of Catherine Medici.

The kitchens are down near water level.

Detail from a cabinet.

The chapel.

Some of the team who work the gardens.

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The Black Band

The Black Band ("Bande Noire") was a notorious syndicate which operated in France in the 1820's, after the french revolution, buying up old chateaus and the like and demolishing them to sell off the materials.  One chateau which met this fate was the Chateau of Chanteloup near Amboise, which once had a grounds of 8,000 acres and extensive gardens and water features.  It was at Chanteloup that one of the last owners (Chaptal) invented and developed the idea of sugar beet farming.

As a result of the Bande Noire the chateau and its gardens have almost completely disappeared, leaving just a semi-circular lake with the "Pagoda of Chanteloup", a 44-metre high tower, standing at its centre in the middle of the countryside.  Apparently Chinese things were fashionable at the time.

Brian (a little speck) at the top of the Pagoda of Chanteloup.

From the top there is a fine view out over the countryside, and back to the town of Amboise.  It was another nice warm day today, and not many people were visiting this particular site.

Sue on level one.

That's Sue down there, beside the lake.

From the top.  It's quite flat country around here.

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Amboise

Amboise is the nearest town (population 12,000) to our cottage.  It sits beside the Loire, and is dominated by the Royal Chateau which sits in its centre.  An interesting fact is that this is where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last few years.  His remains are in a little chapel in the chateau.  From the town below, the chapel is perched high up on top of the massive walls.  That's it in the middle of this photo:

However when you make the climb up into the chateau you find that up there are beautiful lawns and gardens, and the actual chateau is nowhere near as big as the protective walls might suggest.  Here is how the same chapel looks from up there:

Leonardo's resting place, inside the chapel.

The chapel and the actual chateau, and its lawns and gardens all sit high up behind those protective walls, providing a private estate which was very popular with the french aristocracy, who used to come and stay here.

The Chateau Royal

Inside the chateau

Part of the formal gardens.

Almost birds-eye view down to the houses below the walls.

From the top of the walls; town below.

Amboise is a nice little town, and apparently popular with tourists who filled the cafes and restaurants along the street below the chateau.

Salsa dancing in the streets.

One of many Harley Davidsons visiting the town that day.

Bridge over the Loire at Amboise.

Our rental Citroen Picasso.  Seems I need some parking practice!

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The Paris Air Show

On my last free day in Paris I went to the 51st Paris air show.  This considers itself to be the most important air show in the world, and last time (in 2013) was attended by 300,000 visitors!  It is firstly a trade show, where about 2,000 companies exhibit their products and services and for customers from the aviation industry to buy, and secondly a show where people (ok, men) can come and get a close look at all sorts of amazing aircraft and related technology.

The show is held at Le Bourget airport, which is one of several smaller Paris airports, where there are several large permanent exhibition halls in which the trade exhibitors set up their stands.  After three trade-only days the show opens to the public for three days, and the crowds pour in.  The main attractions are the dozens of aircraft of all shapes and sizes on display, and the flying displays overhead, which started about lunchtime and continued throughout the afternoon.

I took a train ride of about 45 minutes out to Le Bourget station where there were free shuttle buses to take everyone to the airport.  When I got out of the train I found myself in a crowd of about 2,000 people and growing fast, of people queuing for the shuttle buses!  It took me another hour or so to get on a bus, ride to the airport, go through security checks and then through the ticket office before I was actually there.

Colourful helicopter pilot's helmet.

The "Archangel" border security plane.

Airbus M400 military transport.

A turkish helicopter!  Note the red crescent engine cover.

A tiny gyrocopter.

Airbus demonstrated their new all-electric plane, which took off and flew about for a while to show that it really worked.  It's just a small plane (below) but represents an interesting development.  No doubt batteries will continue to get smaller and lighter.

The Airbus experimental electric plane.

It had not occurred to me that there would be drones at the show, but they were there in all shapes and sizes, quite a number of them.  The smallest are just one metre or so long, with little petrol engines and wooden-bladed propellers at the back, while the largest are the size of a light plane.

The "Long Range Lethal Loitering System" drone.

Large (behind) and small (foreground) drones.

Probably the biggest drone I noticed.

There were dozens of aircraft of all sizes, right up to a Boeing 747, and a European Ariadne space launch vehicle.

Ariadne space rocket.

I found a place on the ground to sit, along with thousands of others, and settled down to watch the flying displays.  They started with a world champion acrobatics pilot flying a plane he had built himself, and progressed to larger aircraft, right up to the huge Airbus A380 double-decker airliner.  It was amazing watching the large aircraft overhead doing things which would surely have had all the passengers screaming if any had been on board.

Airbus A350 giving a display.

Airbus A380 cavorting overhead (bigger than a Jumbo jet).

The final display I watched was the European fighter jet.  I don't have a long telephoto lens, so here is a distant picture of that jet, which whistled about at incredible speed doing all sorts of things that would make most of us black out, and all the time making a sound like a loud thunderstorm directly overhead.  I suspect the noise must be part of the design, because it is so loud you cannot hear yourself think.  After that I decided I had probably been sitting out in the hot sun long enough and had better start on the long trip home.  A memorable way to end this visit to Paris.

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