Amboise

It was hard to leave the Chateau de Pray.  It has been several days since we having woken up without an alarm.  We had promised each other as we planned this trip that we would take it slower and stay in one location for several days, rather than moving every day for a new location.  The last couple days have gone against our promise to each other and to ourselves.  We took our time and didn’t check out until 11 a.m., which was our required check out time.  More mojitos by the pool would have been nice but when we made this reservation Chateau de Pray could only accommodate us for one night.  We drove away with regret.  

However, we were also excited. We are spending the next two nights in a troglodyte home.  If you don’t know what that means there is no shame.  I didn’t either.  It means a hermit or person who is being deliberately ignorant or a human cave dweller.  Amboise has many homes built into the sides of the hills.  When we knew we could only stay one night at Chateau de Pray we decided to spend the next two nights as troglodytes in a cave home (with a washing machine, of course).  It was too early to get into our AirBnB when we left the chateau so we headed down to the center of Amboise near the Loire River.

We walked along the river bank impressed with the public art.

The office of tourism was close by.  We decided to poke our heads in and get some info.  We bought tickets for Le Petit Train.  In a 45 minute circuit they promise to show you the sites of Amboise.  We thought it would give us a lay of the land and help us to recover Gayle’s back and my knees from the rigors of Mont St-Michel.

We went past half-timbered houses.

We made a brief stop on Ile d’Or (Isle of Gold), the island that lies in the middle of Loire River and boasts the best views of the Chateau d’Amboise.  

There was an artist sitting by the riverbank painting the river and the chateau.

I walked down to the Leonardo da Vinci statue by an artist named Cataldi. The only portraits we have of DaVinci are self-portraits in which he is a balding guy with a beard.  If DaVinci looked like a Greek god I think that might have been recorded.  But now that I am seen this statue I will never quite think of DaVinci the same way again.

The rest of the train tour was uneventful and very, very bumpy.  We did go past a series of troglodyte homes and learned they were considered “modest” living.  I asked Gayle if that was because they had no windows.  “No,” she said.  “They are for lower income people.”  I began to wonder what our cave home that sleeps 10 people and welcomes pets would actually look like.  At the end of our tour we were deposited back on a bustling tourist street.  We were very hungry and just picked the first creperie that seemed to be popular.  We had a “very French” waitress and by that I mean a bit surly.  She rushed us into ordering quickly.  We both got galettes which were tasteless.  We left half of them on our plates.  We stopped in a boulangerie. After purchasing two Kouign Amann pastries for our breakfast the next day and two baguette sandwiches for dinner we went back to our car.  We still had an hour to kill before we could check in to our cave home.  So we found a grocery to replace our laundry detergent and went for a drive hoping to see the Chateau Chenonceau, which we have tickets to visit tomorrow. We didn’t see Chateau Chenonceau.  It is a bit back from the road, but we did have a beautiful drive.

We arrived at our troglodyte home that promised designated parking for up to two cars.  Again we were reminded that in France we have a large car.  I am glad Gayle is the driver.  

The home is interesting.  The living room is definitely a cave.

Gayle and I each claimed a bedroom.  I started a load of laundry.  I am a bit obsessed about getting my clothes washed during the four weeks that I am traveling in Europe.  I spent 45 minutes trying to get the air conditioning unit in my bedroom to work.  I was not successful.  Gayle took a nap.  Up to this point neither one of us had spoken of the terrible smell of cat piss throughout the home.  When Gayle got up from her nap she told me that her body hurt from an hour nap on a bed that was more like a board.  “I can’t sleep here tonight.  I won’t be able to sleep on that bed and the smell is horrible,” she admitted.  We debated what to do.  Would Chateau de Pray be able to find us a room if we begged?  I had a load of wet clothes on a drying rack in the front yard.  Should we find a hotel and arrive with a sack of wet clothes?  

We didn’t solve the question before we needed to leave for our next adventure — a hot air balloon ride over the Loire Valley.  We didn’t even eat the sandwiches we had bought for our dinner.  It is hard to eat a sandwich with the smell of a litter box in your nostrils.  We were both upset and frustrated, which seems silly as I write about it now, but neither of us wanted to return back late to this cat piss of a cave home.  While Gayle drove us to the meeting place for our balloon ride, I searched for somewhere suitable that could accommodate us for the next two nights.  We were resolved.  We needed to move and we would use our cave home as our personal laundromat.  By the time we met up with our balloon pilot we had booked a hotel near our “laundromat”.    We both felt calmer and ready for an aerial view of the Loire Valley.

Gayle has experienced balloon flight before.  She was not a newbie.  I am a hot air balloon virgin.  I had no idea what it would be like.  Sixteen passengers stood in the parking lot as the pilot divided us into 8 French speakers and 8 English speakers and gave us an itinerary for our 3 1/2 hour adventure.  We were loaded into two jeeps according to our native language.  I had a hard time crawling into the back of the military jeep because of my knees and so for the rest of the evening he made special accommodations for his two health challenges — me and the 94 year old man who was among the other passengers.  We were driven out to an open field.  The balloon and basket were unloaded from the trailer.

Men in the group were recruited to help place the basket on its side.

The balloon was attached to the basket.  Large fans were turned on as two passengers and the pilot helped up the sides of the balloon so it could inflate.  

As the balloon became more inflated hot air was shot into it.  

When it was full of air the basket righted itself with the pilot inside.  

Twelve of the passengers climbed over the sides of the balloon and into three of the compartments inside the balloon.  The last compartment had a bench and a door.  It was “reserved” for the 94 year old man, his daughters…..and Susan the cripple.  I didn’t even get to be in the same compartment with my sister.   We smiled at each other before we took off but we didn’t get to share the experience as we had hoped.

The pilot stood in his own section with four tanks of propane that fuel the flames of hot air.  I was right next to him as he blasted hot air into the balloon.  I don’t know why I was worried I might get cold.  It was very hot where I was standing.

The ground crew that was ready to chase us to where we land got further and further away.  

I was not remotely nervous as we climbed into the sky.  We flew over Chateau Chenonceau, which we will visit tomorrow.

The balloon constantly revolved like we were a wheel.  It allowed everyone to see the sights below as the Lithuanian pilot would describe what we were seeing to the English speakers and then the French speakers.  

We went as high as the clouds and it got hazy and colder.  We could see other hot air balloons in the distance.  

After an hour in the air our pilot started our descent.  He was aiming for a particular field near an airport.  We crossed over the Cher River that we had been following. When we got close we all crouched down and held onto rope handles on the inside of our compartments.  It was a fairly gentle landing.  

Those of us in the “health impaired” compartment exited through the door.  Then some of the others got out and held on to the side of the basket to try and keep it steady. 

Eventually it was placed on its side for the rest of the passengers to crawl out.  Gayle had to crawl out of the basket while I got to walk out…like the cripple that I am.

The work of getting the balloon uninflated and back on the truck began.  

The pilot got the able-bodied involved.  

Some of us watched.

As the sun began to set…

…the pilot gathered us together for ceremony of champagne toasting.  He spread a table of delicacies from the Loire Valley and his native home of Lithuania.  We were each given a certificate of our flight and encouraged to spend 40 euros on a video of our experience.  Neither Gayle or I were inclined.

We drove back to our cave home to gather our luggage.  We hurriedly packed and started another load of laundry before driving to the Best Western Le Vinci Loire Valley.  By midnight we were in bed in a hotel room that didn’t smell like cat piss on a bed that didn’t feel like a board.  It turns out that we are not cave dwellers but perhaps a different use of the word troglodyte fits — deliberately ignorant.