Amboise and da Vinci

Amboise

After a very nice breakfast, We drove up to the next Chateau and checked in. This is another small hotel from which we will be starting our cycling trip. As usual, very old and quaint and also very French. It also boast a Michelin star restaurant. We have booked a meal tomorrow night. We had to return the car to the Europcar depot. Easy enough, not! We had to drive to the other side the river and hunt for the place. It was in a little convenient store which doubled up as the depot. Can’t work out these Frenchies.

Got a cab back to the town centre. We rewarded ourselves with coffee, tea and pastries (and chocolates). People watching was fun as there were a lot of older tourists. If any of them has a cardiac arrest, well… I am on holiday…. Now, it was down to some serious sightseeing. First to the church. This was the church of St Denis. Very nice and cool inside. Not gaudy like a lot of the churches in Europe.

Then we headed to Leonardo da Vinci’s house called Clos Luce. It was a mansion built along the lines of the 15th century buildings. Very neat and tidy and beautifully restored. As usual, it also had a very extensive garden. The most interesting thing about this place was the basement exhibition of his inventions. The boy was way ahead of his time. Just didn’t have the materials to make it all come true. Again, there were lots of school groups. One thing that stood out, once we are in rural France, the kids were all white whilst in the cities, about 30% of the school kids were either middle eastern or african. Based on this, in 30 years, France could be black and be very different. So visit now if you can!

From Amboise, we walked the 3.7 km back to the Chateau de Pray. Deb and I crashed for a 30 min snooze before beautifying ourselves for a fine dining dinner. We took a cab to the restaurant. The driver gave us a card to call when we wanted to return home. The meal was fantastic. Fine dining indeed although the French waiter made it clear that he did not want to be there. Nonetheless, amazing food. If we keep noshing up like this, we are all going to need sleeve gastrectomies!

The drama came when we wanted to get home, Firstly, the man at the restaurant reception flat out refused to help us call for the taxi as the taxi company was rude to him 2 weeks ago. Basically, he said fuck them (in English)! Then we said can you call another company and he said there is no taxis in Amboise after 10 pm. You have to be kidding as it was a 4 km walk home, on the main highway, in the dark! There was no budging on the bloody taxi front. So we took off on the trek back to the Chateau de Pray using our phone torches to lit our way. Finally, after an hour, we made it back. What a way to end fine dining. Fucking ridiculous and I was starting to change my mind about the French. We’ll have to chalk it up as an adventure.

The cycling starts tomorrow. I’ll try to have fun but I know its a silly thing to do when we should be driving. Certainly can’t get taxis!