2-8

After brekky, we headed to the confusingly named Blois-Chambord station, while Chambord is 20 KM away - anyway more on that soon. We walked past the Novotel in Blois, which must have been the one I'd stayed out oh so long ago. The monumental spiral staircase triggered a memory for sure. As did the porcupine and salamander motifs. When I first visited I'd collected postcards of such things from the Chateaux and kept them in a scrap book.

Chateau Royal de Blois (1608) is an intimate Chateau, which is where Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) spent her final days. Rooms are ornate and incorporate various architectural styles, i.e. medieval, gothic, renaissance and classical.

We caught the bus to Chambord (1519) after much ado about nothing. The lady at the tourist office was busy fielding ridiculous questions from a Vietnamese tourist like ''which is the best Chateau?''. Then, she showed us a picture of where the bus stop is at the bottom of some steps, of which there were two or three similar flights of steps nearby. Somehow, we found the bus stop and Bob's your uncle. We has lunch first as it was that time again. Unfortunately, I ordered a quiche, which turned out to be full of ham, so I stopped taking out the ham as the ration was not in my favour and bought a Vegetarian baguette, which did the trick.

We were ready to be wowed by more than 400 rooms and over 70 staircases. There were a great many tourists, as many as we'd seen on the trip so far. Still, usually, no doubt, there would be even larger numbers descending on the place. I remember the front of the building come to think of it. After seeing what Lonely Planet describes as the largest and grandest of the royal Chateaux, we carried on

by walking around the grounds, where they are plenty of ferns and a place to observe fauna and took some nice pics. We decided to have a sweet crêpe and I tried some cider before we got the bus back to Blois. We had dinner at an Italian place and Dumi wasn't happy that the teak she had was undercooked when she had asked for it to be well done. I was luckier with my ravioili with truffle sauce. Bon nuit.