L2L Days 12/13 - Tours to Chatellerault

 Last 3 rides, all wet!  The rain makes it difficult to take many pictures or videos, but we've compiled the ones that we were able to snap today into our normal video compilation.  

We have now completed all of our allotted rain days riding (kidding, of course there's no allotted rain days on a bicycle tour.  However, we are facing 3 more rain days in a row and since this is a 'fun' trip, we've opted to change route.  Tomorrow, we ride to Poitiers, which is a short 23 miles, where we will catch a train to Bordeaux.  We've booked a hotel there for 2 days, so we can enjoy the undisputed wine capital of the world!!!  From there it's 175 miles to end of France and beginning of Spain.

Special picture additions further below because we missed a blog day when we did a castle tour...  

Cheers ~Cam and Alex

 So yesterday (Tues Sept 24) Alex and I toured 2 castles.  One was newer (Chambord) , larger and more uniform in construction.  The other (Chenonceau) was older, had been rebuilt and remodeled on several occasions.

Both had interesting stories behind them.  Our tour guide liked Chambord best, but Alex and I both thought Chenonceau was more interesting.  It has a very amazing story about King Henri and his Queen, Cathrine Medici (from the Italian Medici family of Florence and I think Milan).  Anyhow, Henri had a beautiful mistress by the name of Diane de Poitiers.  Henri gifted here property and such and even incorporated her name into the castle insignia.  Notice the symmetric double 'H' and 'C' somehow also create a symmetric double 'D' for Diane.  Mind blow!

Of course, Cathrine was not happy about this, but what could she do? Henri was King.  Well, when Henri died, Cathrine took all the gifts back from Diane and then changed the insignia to the below, where is there was just a very slight, simple narrowing of the 'H', making the 'D' disappear.  Genius!

The other great thing about Chenonceau is the kitchen.  It was amazing and had a lot of very interesting gadgets that enabled the kitchen to function for large gatherings.  

Alex liked this bread cutter ( I should have added a zoomed out photo).  Any idea why he liked it?

This is a rotisserie.  You see all the gadgets that drive the spindles and what you don't see is outside the kitchen, the rope is anchored by a weight which drives the whole system.

This is a very large caste iron stove.

I'm just dropping in a bunch of misc pics from our tour