Loire Valley

Hey there blog fans! Happy Memorial Day to all. What a month May has been...where do we begin?? As you know from the last blog, we had Brent and Erika visiting at the very end of April. Then we travelled to the Loire Valley area of France at the beginning of May with our friends, Darren and Nicole. Mid-month, I was in London a few days for work while Aggie held down the fort back in Zurich. Big Fred and Andrea met us on Saturday, May 17th in Rome, Italy. We traveled around the boot and worked our way back to Zurich. Fun times have been had and that trip will be our "part II" of the ongoing "Family, Family and more Family" blog series (which has three parts, incidentally - Brent and Erika's visit was "part I").

Now, please pardon the interruption as we turn your attention to our travels at the beginning of May...May 1-5th to be exact...when we stomped around the Loire Valley. Aggie has been wanting to visit this area of France for some time now. Her friend, Annette Cooper, who lived in Amsterdam the same time we were in Luxembourg, spoke very highly of it and it grabbed her interest.

If anything, we should dedicate this blog to the Tardavans. We were near Nevers, France where Dominique grew up. As we were driving through the countryside and the vineyards, we recalled how much we really love France and what a great time we had while visiting with him and his family two years ago (still some of the best meals I have had to date, which is saying a hell of a lot!).

So, off we went on Thursday, May 1st for our all-out roadtrip! We left in the afternoon and our first destination was Dijon, France. We have stayed in this area before when we took our first weekend trip after Aggie moved to Lux. The drive was about 3.5 hours long but it went by quickly enough. Dijon is the capital of the Burgundy region, and if you didn't know, we have a special fondness for the wine that is produced here. So we were pumped...

Our hotel was in the city center area and it was the typical style European hotel....nothing too fancy, lost 80's furniture, etc. It was clean and had a nice quaint feeling to it, which was good. After we parked (always an adventure) and checked in, we walked around the town and found a place for dinner. Of all the cuisine choices we had, we opted for Moroccan food! It was really tasty and we left feeling very satisified.

The next morning we got up and headed to Orleans, France which was about a 2-2.5 hour drive away from Dijon. We were heading to the Orleans train station to pick up our friends, Darren and Nicole Ludwig, who were coming in from London. All worked out well and we were on the road again heading toward the Loire Valley by 1pm....it probably would have been by 12 or 12:30 but Aggie and I got turned around on our directions and basically went in circles around the city of Orleans! Darren and Nicole were good sports about it and laughed with us...however, that is part of the adventure right?! (It should be noted that Nicole was about 8 months pregnant at the time and would have been very justified in being pissed off at us, but she was not so that scores her some points!)

We drove straight to the cheateau were were staying at that evening in Bournand. Once we arrived, we were greated by the owners, John and Vicki Majors. Now you don't get a more American name than that! John is a very recently retired partner from E&Y and worked for the firm for 37 years. To put that in perspective - I have been there for 7!! And it turns out that he knows a lot of the people I have worked for and currently work for. Kind of crazy...

Anyway, they showed us to our guest house, and we got settled in. The chateau was pretty awesome as it had the "castle" part, the guest house (which we stayed in), a breakfast nook, a old-fashion style kitchen, normal gardens, formal gardens, a pool, and really beautiful grounds. We walked around the grounds area and then talked a bit to the owners. They had made us dinner reservations at a local French restaurant a few towns away around 8pm, and we asked them for directions to the place. The map was total chicken scratches but oddly enough (and to our suprise), we were able to follow it and find our way.

We went into the towns of Chinon to Montsoreau. In this area, we went to the top of a hill to see where the La Loire and La Vienne rivers met. We then drove to Chinon. There we found a tourist office and grabbed "normal" maps. We also stopped to have an appetizer and some wine. We walked around a bit then jumped back into the car headed to the restaurant where we had dinner plans.

We had a little bit of time and went to a wine shop near the restaurant (of course we tasted and bought some). Dinner was really good and we enjoyed ourselves. I especially liked my "duck burrito" appetizer (if you know French food, you know what I'm talking about). Getting home that evening was quite interesting...turns out that the directions were mysteriously aimed at getting us to the restaurant but not at getting us home. We got lost and drove back and forth on one little road for about 30 minutes, all the while looking for the off-shoot that would take us back to Bournand. Long story short, we finally got home, but not before we drove down some random road (randomly selected, as is the way with auditors) that had a huge sign reading: Caution: Live munitions! Do not leave the road! All spelled out for us in bright bold English. Seems we were in a military training zone. To top it off, the Majors' (chateau owners) called us to see if we were okay! We finally rolled in close to midnight....


The next day (Saturday) we had our "petit dejuner" (breakfast) in "the nook" and then headed out to explore the Loire Valley area. There is a wine road that leads you to all the castles in the area and we opted to take that route to enjoy the scenary. We underestimated how long it was going to take us to get from one castle to the next, and how long we would spend in each. No worries though....we did just fine and picked up some wine on the way!!

On Saturday we visited the castles Azay le Rideau, Chenonceau, and Clos-Luce in Amboise. We also stopped in the little village of the Troglodytic Goupillieres. The peasants lived in these villages by digging their homes and farms into the hillside. It was quite the fun day. On our way home, we called the Majors' to see if there was a place we could pick up pizzas. They gave us a suggestion, we swooped in and grabbed our grub then ate back at the cheatau. John (the owner) joined us for a few glasses of wine and lots of chatting, and we went to bed that night, full and merry.

The next day we woke up and we basically conqured the Loire Valley area. We said our goodbyes to the Majors then drove on to see the following castles: Rigney-Usse, Langeais, Villandry, and Chambord. I might be missing one??? We saw so many...some of which we went into, and some of which we snapped pictures of from a distance (Ag had a guide that told us which were worth going into and which were not). Anyway, the castles were awesome! Each was maginificant, and had it's own character. I would go into details on them all, but that would cause me to have to blog a whole lot more, and I'm kind of tired. My suggestion, Google: Loire Valley, France.

At the end of the trip, we dropped Darren and Nicole (who, FYI, just had her baby - Ms. Alexandra Catherine - last week!) back off at the train station in Orleans and went on to drive the entire 8 hours back to Zurich. As the French would say, "Thanks God pour RedBull."

So, as we said earlier my parents met us in Rome - and accompanied us then to Florence, Venice, Bellagio and Zurich - and just left on Tuesday. We have Aggie's mom, dad and sister, Theresa, coming tomorrow. Busy, busy...we will be blogging again soon about Fred and Andrea's visit. Don't be too "nosy" about what happened...you will find out soon enough. All I have to say is that it was tons of fun, and quite literally, Big Fred left his "mark" in Rome! Stay tuned to find out what happened! (It's worth it).