Chateaux de la Loire

I've wanted to visit the Loire valley castles since I found out about them in high school. The French kings built many famous castles here, and used them as their vacation homes from their even bigger palace in Paris. They are all extremely over the top and extravagant, and the crazy part is that some of them were never even lived in!

Kristen and I decided to stay in one small town called Amboise (big mistake.. most boring town ever), and do an organized tour to see a couple of castles that were on our must-see list. There aren't any trains to go to these little cities where they are, it's all countryside. We decided to sign up for an organized tour to see the two most beautiful, which are Chenonceau and Chambord. We really lucked out because we ended up being on a small bus, just 4 of us on the tour, and one really cool tour guide. Chenonceau was the first stop. This is a castle that was literally built over the Loire river, and the lower part of it looks like a bridge and the castle is on top. I think the reason we loved this one so much is because our tour guide, she had so many interesting things to tell us about the castle and things to look for. For example there was a room upstairs that was painted entirely in black. This room was for the wife of one of the kings, the king died and left her as a grieving widow. She had her room painted black and spent the rest of her life grieving in it. There were so many stories like this! Everything in Chenonceau looks liek it is fit for a king, all the rooms are well decorated and completely intact from when the cheateau was built hundreds of years ago.

The second chateau was Chambord, which is amazing on the outside but not so impressive on the inside. The function of the castle was for hunting, so it never was decorated as fancy as the others. Our favorite story here was about the famous double helix staircase. There is a double staircase inside the chateau which was constucted by Da Vinci. The stairway is intertwined to form 2 separate spiral staircases that wind around each other. This was built so the kings mistresses wouldn't run into each other on their way in and out of the castle while still staying on the same staircase!

Chambord. Too bad it was pouring rain!

Chenonceau