Looking down

These are the back yards of some of the houses right below the royal residence at Amboise. As you can see, there is not much privacy considering the thousands of tourists that can peer into your garden and windows from on high.

The front sides of these buildings face the Loire River. Must be some pricey real estate. Click to spycamify.

And I wonder what it's like at night, when the castle and its ramparts are all lit up. Still, the houses look to be in very nice shape and the gardens well tended. In fact, just to the right of the buildings in this photo, another house was having renovation work done.

It must be interesting, to say the least, to live at the foot of one of France's most famous châteaux.

Gargoyle at Amboise

No gothic structure is complete without a gargoyle or two. The château at Amboise has them in spades (now I'm going to have to look up the origin of that phrase). You can see them sticking out from the castle walls in the photo I posted on Thursday. And here's a close up.

There is only one gargoyle in this picture. I don't know who the people are. Click to griffinate.

The gargouille (gargoyle) is essentially a water spout which drains the roofs and terraces of stone buildings. They're designed to eject water away from a building's masonry walls. The gargoyle is typically found on gothic churches and cathedrals and are carved in the form of grotesque creatures to scare away evil and frighten people into attending church.

But gargoyles in other forms existed long before the gothic period and their use can be traced as far back as ancient Egypt and Greece.

This is where we started

When Ken and I decided to buy a house in France, our first idea was to look for one in or around Amboise. We had vacationed across the river in Vouvray a couple of times and really liked the area. Amboise is a good sized town with a population of about 12,500.

Central Amboise, looking down river, seen from the château's terraces.

The town itself is very pretty. It's a big tourist destination because of the château and consequently is filled with restaurants and shops and a significant pedestrian section in the heart of town. Amboise's Sunday market on the banks of the Loire river is a huge regional attraction; it's easily the largest weekly market around us.

We looked at three houses in Amboise back in 2002, but none of them interested us for one reason or another. Our realtor told us that we could get more of what we had in mind, along with more for our money, if we looked a little farther afield. It was because of him that we found Saint-Aignan, about twenty-five miles from Amboise, and the rest is history!

Amboise on the Loire

Another of the famous and well-visited châteaux in the Loire Valley is the Château d'Amboise. It was one of the royal castles, inhabited by the same king who built Chambord: François the First. It had been a few years since we were inside this one, and we had an opportunity to revisit it when our friends J and C were in town last week.

La Tour des Minimes above the Loire River at Amboise. Click on the picture to crenelate.

This photo features la Tour des Minimes. It's taken from up on one of the terraces of the castle which sits on a bluff about forty meters above the Loire River. The tower encloses an amazing spiral ramp up which horses and carriages could climb from the town below. The self-guided tour of the castle takes visitors partway up the ramp.

The Château d'Amboise is the final resting place of Leonardo da Vinci; his tomb is built into the floor of the Chapelle Saint-Hubert on the castle grounds. The chapel was completed in the late fifteenth century by then King Charles VIII. King François the First brought da Vinci to Amboise in 1516 where he lived out his final days. He died here on May 2, 1519.

A local retirement home

The castle at Châteauvieux in the Cher Valley is about five miles from our house. Built on the foundations of an old feudal manor, the renaissance style castle is now a privately owned retirement home. The adjacent chapel dates from the thirteenth century.

The castle at Châteauvieux, now a retirement home, and its chapel (on the right).

The village at the base of the castle is pretty small with a population of about five hundred fifty. That's about half what the population was in the mid nineteenth century when the castle was rebuilt. I'd wager that the village's principal activity is agriculture, mostly grape growing. The village's web site lists six growers. There's also a poultry farm in Châteauvieux.

Ken, J, and C, pondering the grave of one of the prominent former owners of the castle.

This was one of the drive-by visits we did with our friends J and C last week. We did stop for some photos and to look at the weathered headstones in the chapel's graveyard.

A small stairwell

The tower in this picture encloses the main stairway inside the Château de Saint-Aignan. I've never been inside to see it, of course, but I can tell the stairs are in there. If you look closely you can trace the line of the stair winding up the outside wall.

The stair tower at the château de St.-Aignan.

We're between house guests this morning. Later this afternoon we'll be welcoming Mike and his dog Munson from El Loco & El Lobo for an overnight visit. They're on their way up north to Scandinavia and the U.K. for the month of August. This will be our first meeting, but we've been reading each other's blogs for quite a while.

Callie should have a good time with Munson, a rather large Alaskan Malamute.

Private parking

The château in our neigboring town of Saint-Aignan is privately owned and lived in. There are no tours of the castle itself, but the courtyard is open for the public to walk through. From up there you can get some nice views of the Cher Valley and the town of Saint-Aignan below.

Two cars parked against the old stables in the gravel courtyard of the Château de Saint-Aignan.

On their second day with us, we took our friends J and C to see a few more local châteaux, starting with Saint-Aignan. The weather threatened rain, but the temperature was nice enough to enjoy walking outdoors.

Because the castle is someone's home, their cars are often parked in the courtyard. These two sat in front of the old castle stables. I have no idea whose they were, of course. We did spy a woman doing some cleaning in what looked like a kitchen window above our heads. Maybe the cars belong to the help?