Lisbon

Portugal!!  So this is only two months late. I went to Lisbon the first week of October to run the Rock and Roll Half Marathon with my running partners from Atlanta - Beth and Bruce.  Beth's boyfriend Scott came along for the trip as well and the four of us had a great time! 

 

Lisbon was so sunny and beautiful!  We took a bus tour around the city the first day and here are some highlights:

 

It is a little difficult to see, but the outside of this building is covered in small hand-painted tiles.  They were everywhere and amazing!

Also, they had the most beautiful sidewalks in Portugal that I have ever seen!  Everywhere they had these black and white paver-type of bricks making up the sidewalks.  This was in a particularly lovely boulevard through the center of the city, but even the regular sidewalk had them.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Although this is a couple of days late, Happy Thanksgiving anyway!!  I celebrated Thursday evening with a group of about 15 friends.  My friends Alison and Joe from Pennsylvania were our hosts and everyone brought the sides and desserts.  It was good fun and a delicious dinner.  Thankful to have made so many good friends over this last year in London!

I still need to catch up the blog from my trip to Portugal in October and I've just returned last week from Cambodia and South Korea.  Lots going on in the next few weeks before Christmas but I'll be working on this too!

French Wine!!

I would be remiss in my blogging about France I didn't mention the wine.  Ah, the wine!  I'm not a wine aficionado at all, but I do like it!  The Loire region makes some fantastic wines that are sold all over the world.  We did several tastings throughout the trip.  

So I mentioned before about the caves in the hills behind many of the Chateaux?  They have caves dotted all over the countryside and use them for wine storage.  The environment is suitable for storage because the caves are cool, consistent temperatures and consistent humidity.  Here is one that we visited just a little west of the town Chinon.

One area inside had some very OLD bottles in storage - I think they were maybe for show mostly, but that's ok.

A room full of barrels aging.

Wine at a tasting table - this one was delicious!!  Almost so sweet though that it was like a dessert wine.  I didn't care and bought two bottles to bring back to London.  Yummy!!

We drove through some beautiful country during the entire weekend and saw vineyards...

And LOTS of sunflowers!  As a matter of fact, we made multiple roadside stops to get pictures of the beautiful sunflower fields - they kept not cooperating and sagging towards the ground because it was raining.  But we finally got a sunny day!!

Amboise, France

The closest town to our Chateau in France was Amboise.  The Chateau d'Amboise is there and dominates the old part of the town.  We did not make a formal visit, but took a couple of pictures.  I also fell down the stairs outside this one and sported a HUGE bruise on my arm for a couple of weeks.  Nice.  

But it was a super cute little town and we enjoyed walking around, visited their market on Sunday where we both bought scarves (because what else do you buy at markets?) and ate some of the best meals I've had since moving to Europe.  Seriously.  I didn't even know I was into French food but it was amazing!!! 

Chateau Chenonceau

Chateua Chenenceau was our last stop in France before heading back to Paris.  It is one of the most famous in the Loire Valley and the tourist crowd was significantly larger and more obnoxious than anywere else we visited the entire weekend!  Chenonceau, along with Chambord, is one of the main stops that day tours from Paris will make in this region.  So LOTS of tour buses! 

 

After buying our tickets in a building near the parking and having our bags checked for contraband (NO picnics allowed!), we made our way down the grand entrance to the Chateau...

 

Here is it! 

This Chateua is very unique, in that it sits over the River.  It wasn't always like this.  The original Chateau here was only the building part you see on the left, with the turrets.  At some point after that an outdoor bridge was built to connect to the opposite bank of the river.  Then at an even later date, the rooms were built up over the bridge. 

 

Here is a look at the main gallery that is in the section on the bridge.  I thought this was the grandest room in the entire Chateau!

The Chateau has quite a remarkable history!  I'd love to tell you more details, but I can't remember everything and for some reason Wikipedia isn't working?  What I can remember is that the Chateau was primarily built and funded by a Frenchman who was some type of finance minister for the King.  Mostly he used embezzled money to build it!  When the King found out, he confiscated the Chateau and gave it to his mistress.  When he died, the Queen like it, so she claimed it back from the mistress and set up her residence and court here.  She was the one who built the galleries over the River and used the room above for balls and other court-related gatherings.  I'm sorry I can't remember which King it was. Pretty interesting though, right?

 

The Chateua had some nice gardens, although nothing nearly as grand as Villandry.  Here is a building that was part of the original structure.  I think it looks a bit like Rapunzel's tower in Tangled!

An outbuilding in the gardens...

Me and Lizzie, my travelling buddie!

I almost forgot another interesting story about this Chateau! During World Was 1, the gallery was used as a hospital.  During World Was 2, the River was the border for some time between German occupied France and the part still controlled by France.  The Chateau was frequently used as a means of escape for people in the Nazi occupied side! 

Chateau de Villandry

The afternoon visit was to the Chateau de Villandry, where our primary goal was to visit the gardens. Mission accomplished!  

Look at this fantastic dog statue!  I loved it. 

We didn't actually end up visiting the Chateau itself because we were there too late in the afternoon.  But the gardens were our goal to visit and they were amazing!

Chateau d'Usse

There are many chateaux in the Loire Valley that are open to visitors, so we narrowed our list down to visit three.  The first was Chateau d'Usse.  Wikipedia was not very clear, but it looks like the Chateau was originally built in the 11th century, but the current version was more from the 16th-17th centuries. Similar to the B&B, the back part of the Chateau was built into the hillside and there were tunnels underneath used for safe escapes into the forest several kilometers behind the Chateau!

Finally, Usse is renowned for being the inspiration behind the story of The Sleeping Beauty, written by French author Charles Perrault.  It does have a certain Disney-ish quality!

We were able to climb one of the towers...

And tour a portion of the interior.

This was the view down to the nearby Village of Usse.  I was sorry it was so overcast, but at least it wasn't raining and you get an idea of how charming it was!

The courtyard of the Chateau...

And the gardens down in front.

There was also a small chapel to the left of the Chateau and some caves used for wine storage.  We were there about 2 hours and the rain held off until we got back into the car.  Onto the next stop!