Blah and Cheverny

Today was our last day in the Loire Valley before we head off to Bordeaux. We had a relaxing, slow start to the day, ordering room service coffee and lounging in the room while we ate our grocerystore breakfast before hopping in the car and heading out. Something we've learned over our travels is that we would way rather eat a $2 sandwich from 7-11 than spend a ridiculous amount of money on poor service and bad food.

We decided on two chauteaux for the day: Blois and Cheverny. First stop was Blois which unlike most chateaus, is smack in the middle of a pretty good size town, so there were no stately driveways and manicured gardens to usher you to the entrance but we hoped the interior would make up from the less than wow first impression. Well, as far as really spectacular palaces go, Blois was rather blah. After Amboise and Chenonceau yesterday we zipped through this place in like 20 minutes.

As you can see we were so impressed by Blois that we didn't take any pictures! Anyhow our visit did have us quite peckish and we needed a "glamour lunch" and in this department, Blois delivered.

Take note people, if ever in Blois, check out "Lodge", 100% American food, complete with menus with photographs of the menu items. Super trashy and SUPER delicious. I was tempted to try the Inferno Burger (3 stories high in the photo) but opted for a yummy Bacon Cheese Burger. Judge us if you want but this meal really hit the spot.

After lunch we made our way out of Blois to Cheverny. Now, this place rocked. Cheverny is all about the interiors of the chateau which is said to be the best of all of the palaces in Loire. This is not a huge place but every room is beautiful. Some of the other chateaux were obscenely huge but the rooms were empty caverns, impresseive from outside but not as much inside. Cheverny is located on beautiful grounds and a very nice size. We would pick this one to live in if we could, as it is a reasonable size for two people.
Cheverny also is proud of its hunting heritage and has a stable and pack of hounds (about 100) that is uses for hunting. It was quite interesting to watch the "hounds master" cleaning the kennel, lancing some sort of abcess in one dog's ear, and spray painting certain dogs (don't know why. He was explaining in French and everyone seemed very interested and impressed). Apparently, the feeding of the hounds at 5:00 p.m. is quite an attraction but we weren't prepared to wait 2 hours to see that.

We plan on hitting the road early tomorrow for Bordeaux, a 3-4 hour drive from here so that we have some time to tour the city. Our days there are focussed on wine tasting and maybe picking up a few bottles for our collection.