Day 8 - Paris, France to Bordeaux, France

 

After an excellent 3 days in Paris, time to go South in our trip towards Lisbon, Portugal. Today's destination would be Bordeaux, France with main objective during the ride to travel through the Beautiful French countryside. There are just too many things one can do in these trips and deciding what to to and not to do is always a nice and tough exercise.

I had visited many years ago the Chateau de Versailles and fell in love with the whole area and wanted Paula to see the palace but most important the beautiful gardens. Up to 1789 it was home to the royal family which had to move to Tuileries Palace due to the French revolution and the Chateau lost its pre-eminence. Due to the perseverance of a number of curators, it was restored to pre-revolution times and is today one of France's foremost tourist attractions.

Speaking to some French friends of ours they suggested we do the Loire Valley. The Loire Valley is referred to as the Cradle of the French Language, and the Garden of France due to the abundance of vineyards, fruit orchards (such as cherries), and artichoke and asparagus fields, which line the banks of the river. In 2000, UNESCO added the central part of the Loire River valley to its list of World Heritage Sites. It is also home to some of the most beautiful castles in France.

There was not much time to visit many other chateaux so we chose the Chateau de Chambord (constructed in the 1500's) which is the largest chateau (best for bike staged pictures ;-)) in the Loire Valley and is one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinct French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures. As a 16th century chateau, it departed from castle architecture; while they were off-shoots of castles, with features commonly associated with them, they did not have serious defences. Extensive gardens and water features, such as a moat, were common amongst châteaux from this period. The château features 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces, and 84 staircases. The roofscape of Chambord has often been compared with the skyline of a town: it shows eleven kinds of towers and three types of chimneys, without symmetry, framed at the corners by the massive towers. An impressive sight and one of the most beautiful ones we would see in our trip.

 

After doing a number of dubious maneuvers and ride where probably we should not we were able to get very close to the chateau and take some very nice pictures.

 

The valley includes historic towns and we rode through Amboise, Blois, Orléans, and Tours always following the river Loire which acts as a line of demarcation in France's weather between the northern climate and the southern.

As it was getting very late and we still had a very long way to go we could not do a lot of other things worth doing during this day and sped south towards Bordeaux and we arrived in our hotel at 11:30pm.

Time to sleep and get ready for Day 9 where we would go to Spain and ride the northern part and visit Basque country.

Click HERE for all the pictures of Day 8

Posted by Armando