Jenny and Patrick cycle from Amboise to Blois. We enjoy a picnic lunch along the Loire river during which Patrick gets serious about cheese and bread pairing. Viewers of the previous episode may notice that items purchase at Les Halles in Tours are on today’s picnic menu. The next day, we cycle to Château Chambord where we marvel at the structure’s charismatic Immensity. Leonardo Da Vinci’s double helix marble staircase was worth the price of admission by itself! Meanwhile, back in Blois, we enjoy our fanciest meal of the whole trip, a multi-course menu of creative delicacies.
Okay, I’m starting to feel kind of lunchy. Are you feeling lunchy? Don’t we have a spot picked out? We do. We got to keep going. We got to get there if we’re going to get to eat. Are you starting to feel lunchy? Yeah. We woke up to another beautiful September day. packed our piurs, loaded our bikes, and set out from Ambis. Our destination for the day was blah. We followed Laoir Ura 6 from Ambis to Blah, a total of 21 miles or 33 km. The following day, we took a day trip to Casheau Shambbor. We will explain this route further in this episode. [Music] Hey. [Music] [Music] After a few hours of blissful writing, it was time for our lunch. But this is great. This is nice cuz we’re under the chatau. Yeah, it’s really nice. Let’s do it. Say something. I thought they were going to try and take our table. No way. No way. Are you taking our table? Are we facing the chat or I’m going to face the I’m going to face I might face the chat a little bit too. Okay, here’s what we got. We got the sheep mild le dbby which is sheep mild. And we have a bread that started out around that size. Not very big. It’s a fig bread. It’s fig bread. And figs are in season right now. And we think that this combination is going to be top class. Top class. And I think where we’re sitting underneath the chateau is perfect. Although those sure look like rainclouds, so we better hurry. Mhm. Probably good to have lunch before. With lunch over and our tummies full, we headed toward Blah. [Music] [Music] We finally arrived at the city of Blah. I took a picture of the skyline and then we headed over the bridge to cross the Lir River and go further into the city toward our hotel. Our hotel was not very far from Chateau Blah, which is to my left in this picture. We spent two nights at the And de Britanna Hotel and that is our room right above the sign. Um, this is one of the It’s very old style hotel. Yes, we have a bed here. quite affordable. Probably one of the most affordable nights we’re going to have. Uh we have carpet. Yeah, we’re in we’re up on the third floor, the highest floor it looks like. It’s beautiful views. Beautiful view. We opened our windows and there is a park. Um and there is the bathroom. Little bit interesting shower space is functional. Yeah, nice little s counter here to use and looks like the bed’s good and luggage racks and yeah, we can have our breakfast right there. We can go. We just need to go ask for a hot pot. Okay, it was a Friday evening. After doing some research on restaurants, we decided to eat at Bros. It had a Bib Gourand award from Michelin which meant that it provided good food at reasonable prices. The cheapest offering was a five course meal for €80 each or 160 for two of us, the equivalent of around $180. We were too embarrassed to get up and leave. We decided to make the most of it and enjoy the five course meal. I documented the meal. So, here is our French culinary experience. This is the amuse bush. It is a goat cheese mousse on a little cracker of some sort and a dry curiered ham. Oh, we can eat um this part right here. Mhm. Nice. Okay. Crunchy. Crunchy. Eating at a bibon restaurant. We’re having our first menu that is more than three courses. Okay. So this is our first course and it looks like we have it looks like shaved celery root with little the black pieces are black garlic and there’s sort of a a lemon maybe an aholi type thing that goes with it. Um yeah with buttermilk cream with cucumber sort of salsa it looks like um and something on the bottom that I’m not sure about. Enjoy. Thank you. This is the fish course. And we have pock, which is a white fish. Point to it. I know it’s this. I’m not sure if it’s also this. Um, I know there’s cabbage as well. I think this is cabbage. And the sauce includes absin. Okay. Which I’ve never tried before. This is the lamb course. This is the after the fish course. Now we have the meat course. We have lamb. They’re calling it lamb saddle. Kind of looks like lamb tenderloin to me, but I’m not sure. Um cuz I’ve never heard of lamb saddle. And then we have squash. And what did you say? Black citrus. What was it? Citrus. H. Okay. I’m not sure. We should enjoy. This is our last course of our five course meal. And we have um mushrooms, melot, which I think is a kind of cheese. It looks like we have chantel mushrooms here. I’m not sure if those are the only mushrooms. And there was one last thing. Hazelnut. Hazelnut. Thank you. Here we are. The next morning, we took a day excursion to Chateau Shambour, which was about 10 miles away or 16 km. Our hotel was next to the train station. We had the idea of cutting the amount of cycling and taking the train for part of the trip. On our way back from the chateau Shambour, we cycled to the town of Mar and took the train back. The light was beautiful that morning as we cycled out of Bulah and headed toward Chateau Shamore. [Music] We arrived at Chateau Shambour. It was commissioned by King Francis I in 1519. His royal residence was at Chateau Blah and Ambis. This was to serve as a hunting lodge. We got off our bikes and did what everybody else was doing. We took out our phones and we took some selfies. Here we are walking up the double spiral staircase. I’m going up one of the staircases and Patrick’s going up the other staircase. And as we come to the openings, we can see each other. if we go at the same pace and it just keeps going up and up and up all throughout the three floors of the shadow. Once we got to the top, we went out onto the roofscape. Being up there was amazing in itself with all the towers and the chimneys and then looking down on the grounds below. Where are we today? We went to the chateau de Shambbor. I see it behind you. Yes, we’re still there. We are. It’s huge. The grounds are huge. Um it’s a park actually. And you can bring your bike all the way up to the chateau and ride around it. And there’s all kinds of paths to go through. Mhm. It really dwarfs the other chatau that we’ve seen. It’s just enormous. It’s enormous. Just the you have to come here to see how enormous and it’s the architecture is amazing. Um it was built by Francis or it was the building began by Francis I in the early 1500s and he took the ideas of Leonardo da Vinci. And I heard that there’s uh one part of the castle that they know can be attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. What was that? The helix, the double staircase. Um, where you can walk, there’s two different there’s a staircase that kind of wraps two different staircases that wrap around. So, wrap around each other. Wrap around each other. Yeah, that is fascinating. It was really It was a lot of fun. Um, so and the vastness and the grounds that go with it. They, of course, they wanted to hunt, so they’ve got all these hunting grounds. Did it? Oh, it’s People are moving because it’s raining. It’s raining. Oh my goodness. And we have an at least an hour bike ride ahead of us. Okay. But we have our rain clothes, our rain coveralls. Well, we better get going. Oh, look at all the people behind you on their bikes just like suddenly taking off. Okay, I think we got to take off, too. Oh, we’re ended. The rain had begun, so we put on our rain gear, hopped on our bikes, and rode toward the train station to take a quicker trip back to Blah. That evening, after the rain had lifted, we explored Blah. [Music] [Music] Notice what we have here. This is our breakfast. This is Yes, it is our breakfast. First thing in the morning, you’ll notice that we have the coffee from the grocery store. We have the Aerop press with the uh brewing with the cup from home from our camping. And we have the buffer so that we don’t mar the Oh, yeah. surface. Important. We have the instant coffee for Jenny for Jenny in the little borrowed porcelain mug from the hotel. And then we have the PS deist. We have the p o raza which is like a custardy um swirl with raisins in it and it’s sweet and it’s really I got that at the banger. We did not make those ourselves. This is what we typically have for breakfast. And this saves us overeating a bunch of stuff that we pay a lot for downstairs. Oh yeah, they wanted to charge us 133 for a breakfast which is typical price here and for two of us it’s like $30. So um and it’s nice when we go out and we snack all day on like coffees and stuff. I just keep thinking we didn’t get breakfast. We can afford an ice cream. We didn’t get breakfast. We can afford a coffee. We didn’t get breakfast. we can afford. Okay. Well, um let’s enjoy our little breakfast. After breakfast, we packed our bags and headed toward our next destination.
2 Comments
So pretty and interesting!
Love the details on the food!