9-10 June 2021

Well, we are off! We spent the past few days actively packing and sorting and packing and cleaning the house. A lot of my time was getting my computer and electronics all set. I will have some work to do during the 2 months we'll be gone from Boise, and I had to find working batteries for my 10 year old point-and-shoot digital camera, which takes much better pictures than my cell phone (I didn't think of that early enough to order new ones from the internet that would hold a charge). We finished a big yard project, moving two sprinklers further from the garage wall and adding a border and bark chip layer to store the trash cans. No more mowing around the gas meter, and the sprinklers aren't watering the trash cans. We are both very happy with how that project turned out. We also dug out some dirt to lower the elevation of the grass in front of the gate so the gate opens more easily. Lots of digging and moving dirt! We think that we have everything packed that we need. With projects ending we could also put things away in the house, so it looks neat and somewhat empty. A friend of a friend who will only be in Boise for the summer will arrive in Boise tonight and will rent our guest suite and take care of the house and garden while we are away. We don't have any pets to worry about.

This morning at 5:45 a friend and neighbor Mike showed up at our doorstep with a car ready to take us to the Boise airport (a 10 minute drive). The check-in line was long-we couldn't precheck because we are flying international, but we got to the desk in time to check in and drop our one piece of checked luggage - a canvas duffel with our helmets, padded seats, lock, tool kit and an extra set of panniers for one of our front wheels and a few other things that are along for the ride. While we won't have our luggage on our backs, we have to peddle everything, and weight and volume matter. All our clothing and essentials fit into our individual panniers, which we are bringing as carry on. Pete has a pannier set he borrowed from our friend Mark with whom Pete rode the length of the Rhine River 2 summers ago and who at the end of the trip gifted them to Pete. Mark has multiple sets, and this was an older one. My pannier set I bought new a year ago with some Amazon gift cards I had been accumulating (gifts/bribes for doing book reviews and participating in faculty research surveys) includes a small day backpack which will sit on top of the two panniers and buckle attach to the panniers. This is my "personal item" and I have a fanny pack with my wallet and cell phone, prescription eye glasses, passport and a few other misc. items I carry around town (what previously would have been in a purse, but hasn't been for a couple of years). The backpack will be unsnapped and put on my back whenever we leave the bicycles as it will have all my electronics and valuables in it.

We flew to Denver. We had 2 hours in Denver, then flew to Newark. There was an enormous line for everyone to get their documents checked: Passport, boarding pass, Covid test, vaccination record, signed affidavit that we are not experiencing any Covid symptoms nor had knowingly been in contact with someone diagnosed with Covid. We think some people were turned away. One couple flew in yesterday from Hawaii, but were delayed due to weather and missed their flight out of Newark. That 24 hour delay made their Covid test expire, so they needed to get a new one today rushed. They paid $450 each for their first test and $500 for their second! An expensive trip. (Our Covid tests cost $99 each).

We boarded the plane a little late because of the processing line. I started getting texts saying we are delayed due to weather. Standing in the line we were expecting it to be delayed, but because they weren't processing documents fast enough. They had problems getting the plane air conditioned. It was hot in Newark. We wound up taking off an hour late, but we didn't have anything specific to do at a specific time in Paris, so we weren't stressed.

10 June

After a short overnight flight to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport we finally landed. I stopped to use the restroom and wash my face and brush my hair and teeth. Aaah. Then we got into the immigration line. Another plane had landed. We merged. The line wasn't moving. After about an hour someone notified us that there was an incident on the "other side" and agents were pulled away. They brought bottles of water for everyone because the hall was quite hot. They eventually added more agents and the line started moving. It took 2 hours to get through immigration. Our checked bag was sitting by the carousel waiting for us. There were no staff at customs. We found the sign for the "Trains" and took the RER into the city.

France wanted everyone to fill out a contact form on the plane stating their hotel. The airline was to collect these before we disembarked. We had looked at a few hotels before taking off, but hadn't made a reservation. I used the plane's free wifi to connect to the United Hotel app and searched for a place. I found a great one in the Latin Quarter a block from Place Saint Michel for $75/night, booked it for 2 nights and put that on our form. We had a destination!

Once in Paris we started looking to buy two used bicycles (French friends told us about a French Craigslist equivalent, and Pete has also looked on French Facebook Marketplace). Like in the US bicycles are a bit scarce now, but we did see a few listed in Paris. We didn't see any adequate ones in the towns near the Loire river. We looked again on Facebook Market Place and sent a few messages to sellers. We got one answer who was willing to let us come that evening (Thursday) to look and buy. It was in a suburb of Paris, so we took the RER and a bus. A seller right in Paris (according to Facebook) didn't want us to come until Saturday and we had hoped to be leaving town Saturday morning. The bike we looked at for 50EU was great. The seller mentioned he had others, so we asked to see them. He brought them one by one. One was a mountain bike Pete said was super, but he wanted the first bike, and I didn't like the feel of the mountain bike. Another was just a city bike and that felt comfortable to me. Pete said it was a very good bike, so we paid 90EU for it. Hooray! Thursday night and we already have two bikes purchased. We can spend Friday zipping around town and depart Saturday morning by train for Nevers.

On the bike ride back to downtown Paris the pedal fell off my bicycle. Pete was ahead of me and eventually noticed I wasn't behind him and came back looking for me. He was able to ride it one footed. I rode his bike. It was 10:30 and the roads were crowded with bikes rushing home before the 11pm curfew. We got to our hotel on time. The night desk man gave us space inside to safely store them.

11 June

We had two bicycles. Paris mission accomplished, So we took the morning to do some sight seeing, walking over to see the burnt Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris, then over through the Latin Quarter to the Parc de Luxembourg, then back to the hotel. I was able to reach a colleague who lives in Paris and arrange to meet her for a coffee in the afternoon. We rode there. Then we went in search of a bicycle shop that could make a proper peddle repair. On the second try we found this little hole in the wall place and the guy was super nice and got the peddles repaired, did some quick general check, helped get one of the front panniers mounted and we headed off to see the Eiffel Tower and do a pleasant ride back to the hotel via the Seine waterfront. Unfortunately somewhere around the Eiffel Tower my back tire got a flat. Too late in the day to find a repair shop, so we walked it back. Lots of space had been converted to outdoor bar and restaurant places. We stopped for a coffee. Once back at the hotel I checked the Carrefour to see if they might have a tube (the Ace Hardware in McCall did). No luck. So we settled for going out for dinner on foot. Many of the small back streets near Place de St Michel had been closed off and turned into pedestrian streets so the restaurants could expand outdoor seating into the streets. France only on June 7th allowed 50% indoor dining.

12 June

We got a slow start today. After breakfast we asked at the front desk where to buy a replacement inner-tube. The receptionist knew exactly. Not far away was a sports shop. They even had a section devoted to staffed bicycle service. So I paid for a tube and the service to make the change (the back tire is always more complicated). When that was done we headed to the train station to start our departure to Nevers. About 3 blocks away from the shop my back tire was flat again. We walked back and they replaced it again, this time finding a nail or similar in the tire which they didn't find before. No charge this time.

At the train station Pete decided to go into the information ticket office to get our tickets. He asked for an English speaking agent, but didn't get one. He did get us the tickets though. We needed trains that would accommodate the bicycles. Those would be local trains, not the high speed TGV, which are the only trains that the ticket automats were listing. Good, now to wait to see which track it would depart from (France only announces the track 15 minutes in advance of departure). I was looking at the screen, they listed the next several trains to depart, and I didn't see one that looked like ours. I read the tickets again and after a few more readings realized that Paris Austerlitz was not our first destination, it was the train station from which out first leg departed and we were at Paris Montparnasse! Paris has several train stations, not one big central one, depending on which direction you will travel to. OK, get on the bikes and hurry across town to the right station. We got there just in time, boarded the train, got the bikes situated and the doors closed and the train was off.

After about 10 minutes the train stopped, seemingly at a suburban train station to pick up more passengers, but there was an announcement. Turns out someone had either jumped or fallen and was run over by our train so we needed to wait for the police and ambulance to come and clean things up. 3 hours later the train was moving. We got into Orleans and there were no more trains to get us to our destination. The rail company was putting people into taxis to send them onward. When they saw our bicycles, they commented that that was much more difficult. I said we could stay in Orleans for the night since we had to stay somewhere and weren't in a hurry, if they could give us tickets for tomorrow. They were very happy with that solution. Now to find a hotel.

We found a hotel that had good reviews, set off for dinner. Aaah!. That's what we are here for. Dinner on the street at a little restaurant. We got back to our hotel just as curfew was setting in. The guests in the room under us had returned before curfew and were continuing their party in their room. We tried to be patient, but they didn't quiet down. I shouted in French that it was after midnight. No response. Wait a little, then I went down to their room and banged loudly at their door. Pete made noise from our room, not caring if he woke up others. Maybe they could communicate better with those guests. The guests did then quiet down and we got to sleep .

13 June 2021

We continued our trip to the start of the bicycle tour, the city of Nevers. We rode to the train station, and needed two short trips to get there. There was another woman with a bike on the first train. She was heading past where we were. She invited us to join her in the intermediate town for lunch. We had 1.5 hours. She makes this trip often. We rode to a spot along the river, bought food along the way, and had a little picnic.

Only 2 stops after boarding the second train and FINALLY we were in Nevers. We thought about booking a room at the St Bernadette Monastery, but they had sold their last room between when we started looking and when we actually went to make the booking. Oh well. We picked another place. Along the river things are flat, but leaving the river you go up hill. We had to ride up hill to the hotel. The hotel had friendly staff and they even had a garage room for bike storage. After reorganizing our things and cleaning up and resting a little we headed out to see Nevers and find dinner.

14 June 2021

We left Nevers today. We first finished seeing things in the town that we wanted to. The Ducal Palace was closed on the inside, but they said it was empty. We looked at the outside that they say is the real more remarkable thing. We saw several gates for The Old City. They were very nice looking, probably the most interesting things in this city. Then we set a course to the bridge crossing the Loire to start our trip. There was a sign talking about the start of the Loire bike trail. We were in the right place!

We worked our way North. Our first stop was La Charité-sur-Loire with the Cathedral supposed to be famous because it is second largest in comparison to the Cathedral at Cluny, although part of it has been destroyed. There was a nice view from the nearby rampart.

Continuing north we saw a sign for a town Ménétréol-sous-Sancerre and a hotel/restaurant just a little bit off the trail. We bicycled to the little town and were able to get a room. We showered and went downstairs to have dinner. We met a nice man from Belgium who is an English teacher in a schools there. Nice meal, nice company.

15 June 2021

We had a nice breakfast at our hotel, and then toured the town before moving on. Further down the road a similar sign advertised another town, so we turned off to go find it for lunch. After quite a bit of riding, we didn't find it and the road was turning uphill. We turned back to the main bike route. Sadly we also missed turning off to the town of Sancerre, which we wanted to turn off to see the chateau there. We had seen it in the distance, then got focused on driving.

The weather was very hot today. The big visit was at the end of the day in Briare where there is are two canal passages crossing the main Loire. The older uses locks and has a excavated channel in the river. The second puts the canal onto a bridge (designed by Eifel) and goes over the Loire river. We found a hotel in this town. It was more expensive than any of our others and the internet didn't work in our room, only in the lobby. At one point I was sitting on the stairs outside the locked up lobby to use the internet before going to sleep.

16 June 2021

Today, like yesterday the weather is extremely hot. Pete found a route that took us partially through a tree covered area, but the path was extremely overgrown. I didn't like the tradeoff as the shade was intermittent.

We toured the city of Gien today. It had a castle up on the hill. The signs said admission for museum and chateau, so we bought our tickets. The museum was all about hunting, showing hunting methods, dogs, game, paintings, and trophies. The chateau had been bombed at the end of WWII and was rebuilt in brick, so there was nothing "chateau" about it. Oh well. We can use the tickets for a discount in admission at the next chateau we choose to visit.

We continued onward, stopping in a little town to buy snacks at a grocery, and in another to have a cold soda. Eventually we made it to the town of Sully-sur-Loire, our destination for the night.

We found a room at the Hotel la Tour. He asked if we wanted the regular room for 55EU, or a larger suite. I said the petite, then he said he'd give us the larger one for the price of the small one. It was in a round tower, looking like a castle tower. It was real nice. We went out to tour the town on our bikes, then stopped for dinner.

17 June 2021

Today we toured our first real chateau, in Sully-sur-Loire. It was in the Chateaux of the Loire book Pete borrowed from a friend before leaving Boise. It was nice little chateau. They had a film in one room near the start of the tour that ended showing the development of the chateau. Originally there were two little chateau next to each other, mostly defensive, then gradually joined and expanded, occasionally knocked down or burned down and rebuilt.

Then we started our trip onward towards Orleans. We found a trail sign that indicated the "sights" in this stretch and stopped at the next town, Saint Benoit-sur-Loire to tour the Benedictine Abbey. St Benedict was moved there from Italy after his Italian Abbey was shut down and this one created centuries ago. We went into town first to grab a sandwich at a Boulangerie, but all restaurants and the Boulangeries were closing. Pete went into the Tabak to ask if they had anything (no), and came out talking to a woman pointing us to the little grocery (it did not, but it had some nice fruit). As he talked with her, she invited us to stay in her guest house for the night, no charge. So we accepted, toured the Abbey and made our way to her house. She lives by the river at "the Port" and the guest house used to be a fisherman's house. It is much nicer now, but you can see the interior beams and how it had that former life.

We didn't go very far today because we stopped in Saint Benoit-sur-Loire. Pete is tired and wanted a rest day. We have traded our high heat for clouds and rain. The clouds and relative cool were nice. The rain (pouring rain) as we returned from a very nice dinner was not so nice. We have equipment for the rain, but it isn't nice to use, and we didn't bring all of it with us to dinner. Now everything is hung to dry off. The weather forecast calls for rain the next 4 days. We'll see how it goes.

18 June 2021

The rain over night was heavy, but it stopped before morning. Much cooler today. We wanted to say goodbye to Anne before we left, and we knew she had a 9am appointment. When we finally saw her and told her we were going into town to get breakfast, she said she had bread, and brought some over. It was frozen sliced whole grain bread, and we put it in the toaster, used the butter she brought for us and the jam and hazelnut spread we had bought the day before. It was a fine breakfast.

Her house is right on the shore of the Loire. It is really a compound and the part we stayed in used to be a fisherman's "house". Across the street this morning were quite a few people setting things up. They are going to have a festival of boats tomorrow. There were 3 historical styled boats moored there.

Then we said good bye and started our trip onward towards Orleans. The sky was alternating blue with clouds and gray with clouds, but it didn't rain. It was windy and often in our face, but sometimes just to our side. We stopped in Germigny-des-Pres where an old church was located that was built in the Byzantine style, with a unique mosaic.

Then we stopped at Chateauneuf-sur-Loire and bought lunch at the city market. We then looked at the chateau. It is now a City Hall so after sitting in the grounds for a while, we left to continue to Orleans. We were going to meet Camille whom we met on the train on our way from Orleans to Nevers. We made good time, even given the headwind. We stopped just before town to take a dip in a lake that was related to the Loire. Very refreshing, but was much more needed two days ago when the heat was breaking temperature records.

We showed up at the meeting spot in Orleans nicely refreshed. Camille's boyfriend Florent was with her and we went and got an ice cream, then went to a bar on the beach/shore and had drinks. Eventually they saw another friend of theirs and invited him to join us. All three are in technology, around Computer Science, so there was good conversation about that, and about politics, environment and finance. We stayed until 9pm very much enjoying the conversation and company, then we made reservations for a hotel room and parted.

19 June 2021

Florent told Pete about a bicycle cooperative where Pete could probably get a used derailleur to fix his bike so the front gears could be changed by the lever on the handle bars, instead of manually with fingers on a greasy chain. They opened at 10am, so we ate breakfast, took our time, then biked there. Because of Covid, they weren't allowing non-members in. France is a few months behind the US, and is also much more conservative (protective) than the US who doesn't care if others get sick. Pete was able to get the guy who met us at the gate to give us a derailleur from their collection to take with us. So we left, went down to the corner. I emailed Camille to see if they had a few tools we could borrow to install it. Pete brought a few things, but not a heavy wrench set. While we were at the corner, a guy, Jerome, stopped on his bike to ask if we had problems and needed help. We explained the situation, and he said he didn't have any tools with him, and he rode on. A few minutes later he returned saying that he was a member of the cooperative and could go in and get the tools we needed, and Pete could work on it outside their shop. Great! That would have been fine all along So back we went. Pete made the repairs, but there is still something wrong in the cabling system (ask Pete) so it doesn't work. He thinks the switch will work for gear changes in one direction now, but not in the other. A little better, and now he can stop focusing on needing to get this part.

We then departed Orleans. We saw some of the town when we were here for our train lay over. I'd have liked to have seen more today, but it was fine to go. There is so much to see, this can be another visit. We now know 4 people from Orleans.

The Loire à Vélo route goes along the waterfront where we were last night, crossing to the north side at the first (eastern most) bridge and back south at the fourth (western most bridge). We found our way back, went along and continued our journey. A ways down the route there was a map and information sign about an alternative side route to the La Loire à vélo route that takes us by two other towns. We took the detour. As we passed through Saint Helaire, it announced it was the cherry capital of the Orleans region, but we couldn't find any stores along our route selling cherries. We had bought some to be part of our lunch on Day 4 and they were yummy. The advertisement made me want more. In Mézières-lez-Cléry we saw a big mansion and their church. We saw the Basilique Notre-Dame in Cléry-Saint-André. It is much older and like most churches has been torn down in places and rebuilt, often a victim of the 100-years religious war or the French Revolution, or both.

We then headed back to the main Loire à vélo route at Meung. There is a chateau there, Château de Meung-sur-Loire, so we paid entrance to visit it. Pete liked that they had a booklet of information translating each of the displays to English, and they showed what the rooms were for and how they were used, not just "this is a bedroom where Louis slept." Some of the more interesting parts were the evolution of armor, and the change in bathing habits (the Catholics told people that bathing was bad for their spiritual health because you might touch your body, before that in the Middle Ages it was a common and sometimes social thing-think Roman baths). While we were inside it rained, so all the families with kids came inside at once. At one point there were 9 children under 5 years old in one hallway of the chateau where we were reading about the displays. We went out into the hallway near the stairs to read about the next two displays and went back to look at the two rooms once the families had passed.

The rain let up before we left, but started up again as we were in the gift shop handing back our literature. We could see a really dark cloud to the west. We looked for a hotel room on our phones. We had to choose whether to eat dinner hoping the storm would pass, then bike to our hotel, or find something close and rush there before getting soaked. We found something we liked a lot 35 minutes west of Meung, but decided against going into the storm. So we picked a Budget Ibis 2 km north of town. We stopped to buy something takeout to bring with us to the hotel. While we were waiting for them to prepare it, it did its rain thing, and we had clearing skies for our 2km ride to the hotel. We could have gone west, but we also thought there was more in this town we wanted to look at, and while we were thinking of getting to Château de Chambord first thing tomorrow morning to have all day there, it looks like that plan will also be altered. At the hotel we watched the news on TV. They showed that a church in a town 150 km west of us had been torn apart by a tornado the storm we had seen had spurred. Luckily we missed that.

20 June 2021

We did some minor repairs on Pete's bike before leaving the hotel. We really should have brought the small adjustable wrench I have in the camper as it would have worked better than his Leatherman so many times and made the work easier. It is hard to decide whether to go light or be better prepared.

We opted not to buy breakfast at the hotel, but to stop at a Boulangerie (bakery) on the way back into town. There was a pocket park across the street from it on the traffic island between a bunch of oddly intersecting streets, so we had a great place to sit on a bench and eat. Then we went into the town to finish exploring it. Sunday Market was in full swing. We stopped at the Chateau so Pete could wash his hands that still had grease residue on them. One of the workers didn't want to let him in, but the owner was there and he said "go ahead". Many of these chateau are still privately owned and the owners are involved with the tourism aspect. They are expensive to own, so the admission helps defray the cost. 3 years ago my colleague Frank told us that if they receive funds from the government, they are required to open the chateau to the public a certain amount each year, but there is one near him where the owner has not been doing that making the residents unhappy.

From Meung we continued down river. We came across an outdoor faire on the bike path. We stopped, bought a glass of local wine and listened to the community band play a few tunes. It had a nice vibe. Then we continued on.

We stopped in the town of Beaugency to look at its chateau and tower. We saw American tourists!! Not missed.

It is Sunday. We didn't plan ahead well. Nothing was open by the time we wanted lunch. We are not on a good eating timetable. Google said a grocery was open in Muides-sur-Loire, so we went there. It was a grocery associated with a luxury campground. Had we been here during the heat wave, I would have had us stay here. They had lots of little cabins, and a fantastic pool. The bare camping places were mostly empty. The store was on lunch break, so with another pair of long distance bikers we hung out and snacked on the granola bars we had brought from Boise and a Pain au Chocolat I had bought at breakfast. When they opened I had had enough to sustain me. Pete bought a box of Magnum ice cream bars. Not what I had in mind.

It was short ride to our hotel. We took a shower and nap, then went to the boulangerie next door that had reopened for the evening and bought sandwiches. Then we rode to a nature reserve that had some wildlife viewing observation platforms. We didn't see any wildlife but it was peaceful listening to the birds and the tree frogs.

21 June 2021

Today's big goal was Chateau Chambord. We stayed last night at a small hotel in a tiny town only 3 km from the chateau. That made an easy trip in today. We started by having breakfast at the Boulangerie that was next door to our hotel. They had picnic tables outside, so we bought bread and croissants (and food for a later lunch) and a tea and coffee. We had our butter, jam and hazelnut spread and set up shop. People coming and going to buy their bread thought that was super. Another couple sat at another picnic table and we talked with them for a while.

Chambord is a chateau that has a connection with French Kings. There are chateau that are defensive or palatial, there are chateau that were owned by kings, or by dukes, or just general noblemen (rich). Chambord was for kings (and their guests) and it is palatial, not defensive. I checked the internet the night before about how much time to allocate for the chateau. The consensus was 2 hours. We spent over 4 hours there. The place is huge, and we read most of the placards. They now have placards in French and English. We could have rented an audio tour, but just reading was nicer than having another device to carry around. In addition to being large, this chateau is known for all the decorative architectural features on its roof. The upper floor of the chateau they didn't know what to put in there, so they just have an art exhibit. That made visiting that level quick. The interior was built early enough to have the symmetry of a cross, and in the middle there is a famous double spiral staircase. It is large, and you can enter it on opposite sides. During Covid that is convenient as they can designate one as up and one as down and reduce people passing each other. We were told by people we met in Beaugency yesterday that Chambord was real crowded on Sunday since it was Father's Day. They had apparently been there and returned already from visiting it, not spending much time there. It was real uncrowded today. We like that better. In the afternoon some school groups showed up as we were almost finished, but overall no crowds.

We were able to climb up onto the roof level. There we could see the decorative roof features better and had a nice view out onto the grounds. I just wanted to spend time looking at it and enjoying it. Pete was ready to leave before I was. I checked the map and there was a section on the ground floor in the outer wall/building we hadn't visited, so we stopped there. Good thing. The carriages weren't that interesting, but they had a room where they had put on display some of the original pieces from the roof that they had taken down and rebuilt and replaced. That allowed us to see them up close.

We went back to our bikes and beyond the bike corral there were some picnic tables under shelters. We sat there and ate the lunch I had bought that morning. Our visit to Chambord was complete.

It was getting too late to also visit Cheverny, the other "big" chateau in this part of the country, so we set our maps for our hotel. Along the way we came to Chateau Villesavin. I had read about that the night before also. It is a minor chateau. It really is just a stately manor, no kings or dukes. Since we were at the gate and not going to Cheverny, we stopped there. The owners still live there, but open to tourists to bring in income for upkeep and renovations/preservation. To see the interior you need to go on a tour, and one was starting in 12 minutes. We looked at the carriages and sleds while we waited. The tour was in French, but we were handed a description in English. The tour guide was willing to repeat things in English and answer questions in English. Pete was the only totally non-French speaker in the group. That made seeing it difficult for him. This chateau was built for a high ranking employee of Chambord. They think many architectural features used in Chambord were prototyped at Villesavin. The family bought it in 1937. It was empty and not in good repair. They stabilized the structure and bought furniture. Two rooms (including the old kitchen) they furnished as in the 17th century, and the rest they decorated as in the 19th century. There wasn't anything super special about this chateau, but it was a good contrast. If you have watched the PBS show "Escape to the Chateau", that is kind of what this is, but they aren't making a B&B or wedding center from this chateau.

When we finished the tour it was getting ready to rain again. We headed out. Before we got to our hotel the rain really came down. I was ahead of Pete and waited for him in a bus shelter. When he got to it, the rain really came down. Thunder and lightning too. It passed pretty quickly. We were only a km away from our hotel. The hotel is really an old mill that has been converted to a hotel (think AirBnB). We pulled in and there were no signs for 'Registration'. I looked around and found someone inside and knocked on the window. He came out. I said in French that we had a reservation and gave our names. He grunted and led me on. Pete followed. The entrance was around the back of the building, but there was a covered porch making a great bike rain shielded parking place. Our room was up on the first level. A pretty country room with two twin beds, a table, a mini-fridge and microwave. Too bad all the markets were already closed. We had a hard time finding an open restaurant too (it was 7:30). We finally found a pizza place in the next town that was open until 10. We rode there.

The pizza place had a really friendly owner and her young adult son working there. The owner had taken many English lessons and was eager to practice with us. She had a globe where she added a pin for Boise Idaho. The pizza was good too. They had small bottles of local wine, so we bought one to take back to our room.

One of the streets we rode on to get to dinner was named 21 August 1944. There was a placard on one of the barns. Apparently an American plane crashed nearby. The locals hid the pilots. In retaliation the Nazis took it out on the locals, killing several and setting several houses and a barn on fire. The barn with the placard was in the location of the barn that had burned.

22 June 2021

We reserved breakfast at the hotel because there weren't any Boulangerie obviously nearby. They had a room set aside for dining. Breakfast was the typical, bread and croissants, but also yogurt, 3 types of jam, and a bowl of fresh cut fruit (melon, watermelon and bananas), plus coffee and tea. The wife was there in addition to the husband and she spoke some English and was much friendlier. Apparently this place is usually 100% full from April to October, but is not full now. She said the number of reservations is increasing steadily. A pair of guys from the Netherlands were also at breakfast when we were. She gets a lot of guests from the Netherlands.

She has goats, chickens, ducks and peacocks. She said there is a local fox and she has lost several female peahens. The males will hang out and sleep on the roof, but the hens will stay on the ground with their eggs making theme easy prey.

Chateau Cheverny was 6 km from this hotel. I chose this hotel thinking we'd come here after visiting Cheverny, but instead it was before. Cheverny is one of the four chateau that Rick Steves profiled on his episode on the Loire Valley and its chateaux. The chateau is in very good condition, and has nice grounds. It has been in the same family since the 1600s, except for a short time when they sold it, but the next generation later bought it back. It is most famous for its pack of hunting hounds. 120 of them! We could look at their kennel. We got caught outside during a downpour while viewing the grounds, but it was short lived. We were done looking at the chateau and started looking for lunch around 2 pm. We really need to recalibrate ourselves. Restaurants all close at 2pm for the afternoon. Nothing was open. We ate a granola bar from our stash, and rode on.

We passed Chateau Beauregard. Google sent us to the wrong entrance and it was closed. As we tried to continue to the town looking for an open restaurant or grocery (the town roads were under major construction) we passed a sign for the real entrance and stopped. Pete had seen enough chateau and chose not to go in. I bought my ticket and he laid down on the grass to rest. I got to the main building just as an English tour was starting (containing only one German woman). The tour guide was really informative. This chateau is famous for its portrait gallery with approx 200 portraits. Someone spent 2 years trying to decide who were the 200 most important people from the previous couple of centuries, then commissioned a team to go make portraits of each. She explained how they were chronologically arranged and gave us the "History of France" as we walked around the great hall. There was a sign (printed A4 paper) with a title in German. The German woman asked why. Apparently during WWII this chateau was occupied by the Nazis. The note said not to take the portraits from this gallery. The woman was surprised that a small note would stop someone from stealing them. I didn't say anything, but found it odd that she didn't seem to have context. The note wasn't against a petty thief, but a statement that the upper Nazi administration had made a decision, and the others followed their orders. Lots of art was stolen during WWII. These pieces stayed there and were not damaged.

The route to Blois from the Chateau was on a somewhat major country highway, not a nice backroads isolated bike route. Google doesn't always have the best knowledge of bike routes. We came across a Boulangerie as we hit the southern suburbs of Blois. We stopped for a snack, before continuing to the main city and our hotel. Pete reserved a room in the Aparthotel. I had stayed in one in Nancy years ago. It includes a stove top, microwave and mini-fridge. Pete decided we'd cook for ourselves instead of finding a restaurant. Only one grocery was still open and we headed there after checking in and dropping our stuff. We had shish kabobs (it was a north-African grocery), and a package of frozen vegetables and I bought a dry cream of mushroom soup mix from which I made a gravy/sauce. It was a mixture, but tasted good and fed us.

23 June 2021

We walked to the Intermarche super market to buy breakfast. It was only a couple of blocks away and was open. On the way back to the hotel I looked at the time and was thinking about needing to eat breakfast and see the Chateau Blois, and what time it was. I suggested that we ask if we could stay a second night at this hotel, not pack things and head onward the next day. Pete liked that idea. They weren't crowded enough for it to be a problem.

After breakfast we walked to the chateau. This town is built on a mountain that overlooks the river, so there are stairs everywhere. Not good for bikes. We bought our admission tickets. They came with a tablet tour. We had seen them before. It was sort of cool, but took a lot of time to read every note. The coolest part was the rooms they hadn't renovated to look original where we could hold up the tablet and see as we moved it how that part of the room used to look. Other features included being able to click on items in the view of the room and get a narrative about their significance. Sometimes it was easier to just read the printed signs, which were in French and English.

It is getting difficult to keep track of all the kings and what they did. Here the big thing is during the War of Religions the king Henry III (protestant) arranged to ambush and assassinate two of his cousins (Catholic). François I who lived here was a real reader and because he pushed translating books to French is why French became such an important language, overtaking Latin.

When we bought our tickets they said there was a discount if we bought the chateau entrance and the entrance to the Luminaire show at night. Pete thought we should. So we left for a nap, then a nice dinner at a restaurant, then walked around for a bit and went to the show. The place was almost empty, there are so few tourists. We had seen light shows at Nancy and Melbourne. The visuals were nice. The narration was 100% French I can get parts of it, but a few missing words reduces comprehension to 0. I translated what I could for Pete. Not a good choice to attend unless you are very good with French. Still Pete enjoyed the show.

24 June 2021

We bought breakfast again at the Intermarche, but this time after eating it we checked out of our room. We stopped by the Tourist Information office to see about some of the multi-chateau discount tickets. Most included Blois, which we had already seen (the office was closed for lunch when we were buying the tickets for Blois yesterday). The one option without Blois we were told included a chateau that is only open weekends, so we weren't sure we'd get there. We skipped and headed out.

A few km down the road Pete asked me if I had packed the food in the fridge. I had packed some, but not all, and when he did the final check, he hadn't checked the fridge. So I headed back to the hotel to get our goodies.

We rode 11 miles to Chateau de Chaumont. It had a castle and also gardens. The castle was pretty standard, and the upper floors had contemporary art exhibits. The interesting thing was seeing the markings in the courtyard showing where a now demolished wing of the castle used to be. That really helped give perspective. None of the other chateau have done this. The gardens were in the middle of a Garden Exposition, and that was also contemporary art.

When we left we started our search for a hotel. We found one we liked across the river in a restored chateau, and as we tried to book it we had a poor internet connection and as we typed in and resent our credit card information, it disappeared from both booking.com and hotels.com. We looked for another hotel. Nothing popped out at us and the signal was poor. A young woman working at the chateau gate thanking people for their visit asked if we needed help. She had been an au'pair in the US and spoke perfect American English. She started by making a hotspot for Pete, then called the hotel we had tried to book. It had rooms, and cheaper than listed in Hotels.com. She made us an unofficial reservation and we started off toward it. We stopped at a grocery store on the way and bought dinner. one plate of chicken and roasted potatoes and one of veal and roasted potatoes from a ready-to-eat heated food display, plus drinks and food for the morning.

We got there and the place was empty. The next morning I decided there were two other rooms occupied. Again, reference the PBS Escape to the Chateau show for the sort of place we were at. I asked as we were departing. His parents bought it 40 years ago and it has been a BnB in their family since then.

25 June 2021

We ate the food we had bought for breakfast, and headed out. We stopped for coffee at a cafe in town before getting on the trail. We made it to Amboise around 2pm and stopped first at Château du Clos Lucé. This is a smaller chateau where Leonardo de Vinci spent the last three years of his life. This chateau has thus set up all its displays to showcase Leonardo. I'm a techie, so this is of interest to me. It is also one of the Chateau showcased in Rick Steve's Loire Valley episode. Pete wasn't as interested/motivated, so I bought him a ticket for the chateau and gardens and me chateau, gardens and exhibit. I'm not sure if he got into something free or I missed the exhibit as no one was checking our tickets once we got out of the ticket office. A building that might have contained the exposition had a room with a multimedia presentation on de Vinci's art. I thought I'd blow through it, but instead was captivated by it. My research is in image processing and looking at parts of the paintings he did very zoomed in to see the texture of the cloth and the cracks in the paint was very interesting. They also did a comparison of just the lips he painted in several of his pieces, and overlaid certain test sketches he had done of hands and arms and cloth onto paintings he completed.

We then went to our accommodations. They were made through Booking.com but was essentially an AirBnB. A very nice woman had 3 rooms in her basement she rented out. Talking with her over breakfast was a joy. And she had a cute mini-dog. We went out nearby for a quick "fast food" dinner and returned to crash for the night.

26 June 2021

Today is another big chateau day. We set off after breakfast for Chateau de Chenonceau. It is about an hour south of Amboise. It is also featured in the Rick Steve Loire Valley episode. It is one of the major chateau. Our hostess called it the Womans' castle. King Francis the 1st owned it and gave it to his mistress Diane de Poitiers. Then after Francis died, his wife Catherine de Medici took it back. Diane built the famous bridge part over the River Cher, and Catherine added two stores of rooms onto it like Florence's Ponte Vecchio.

Louise of Lorraine, wife of King Henry III had it next and lived her life as a widow after Henry died with rooms painted black for mourning. We had a late lunch there and then headed back into the city. On the way we passed a woman also bicycling. We had to stop to fix gears and passed her again as we came to a corner. She and Pete started talking and she mentioned the outdoor bar on the corner where her husband was working as a bartender (and owner). We stopped there to talk more and have a beer in the garden. Marie mentioned that she lived in Tours (our next stop) had a place there she rented. We got her contact information and when we got to our hotel and were able to look at our plans for the next day emailed her. We reserved two nights.

27 June 2021

We finished up the Chateaux of Amboise today. We went to the Chateau royal d'Amboise and Chateau Gaillard. They are both "downtown".

Chateau Royal d'Amboise as the name implies was a royal residence. It was originally built long ago, but after a growth stage, much has been torn down, leaving only a fraction of the original complex. Kings Louis XI, Charles VIII and Francis I lived there in the 15th and 16th centuries. Charles VIII died in this chateau by hitting his head on a door lintel on his way to play tennis in 1498 and got a bad concussion. In the late 16th century the castle started its decline. It is on a hilltop and has beautiful views and a pretty garden.

Chateau Gaillard had royalty visit it, but seems like just a minor chateau. It reminds me of the Beauty and the Beast story of an old chateau buried in the weeds and forgotten. Someone bought it in 2011 and renovated it. It boasts gardens, but they are pretty simple. The admission price is too high for the amount of chateau to visit. It is slightly more expensive than Chateau Royal d'Amboise. At least I can justify that it goes towards the restoration of this chateau so it wasn't lost forever.

After visiting the chateau we stopped in one of the little restaurants under the Chateau Royal d'Amboise for lunch. We had sandwiches, but decided to save them for dinner as we didn't know what the nearby restaurant scene would be in Tours. Today has been a rainy day. Much we missed while inside the chateau. It started raining again very hard as we finished lunch so we stayed for a coffee to let it pass. Then we headed out for Tours. That is a 1.5 hour ride (we took 2 hours). Unfortunately another round of rain started after we had been riding 15 minutes and we couldn't avoid it. We just kept going. We had parts covered and parts we were willing to let be wet. I had a rain coat for my top, but chose not to put on the longer rain coat so my shorts got soaked. My shoes were just wet as we rolled along the highway, but when we slowed down all the water from my handlebars ran down into my shoes. Yuck. Pete brought rain pants, but his panniers are not very waterproof. Luckily most things can dry off and when we arrived Maria and Alain were waiting for us and had turned the heat on and when they saw us they turned more on.

Their "gite" (= BnB) is an apartment built into a cliff wall = a cave. We had seen many buildings built into the cliff walls on the ride out. Even in Chateau Gaillard the kitchen was actually dug into the cliff wall. Now we have stayed in a cave, a fisherman's house, a castle tower, a chateau and a farmhouse. This is an adventure. This cave is newly remodeled and quite nice.

We made dinner and the rain had stopped so we headed out on foot to explore the surrounds. There is an old Abbey next door. It is now a school. There was a sign along the road saying (similar to ones I had seen south of Amboise) that on July 1st the road would be closed for the Tour de France. I emailed Marie and asked if the Gite would be available 2 more nights. Being so close was an opportunity I didn't want to pass up. It was. Now to adjust our plans.

28 June 2021

We slept quite late. I think it was after 9am when I looked at my phone. The back part of the cave is darker, although there is a curtain to pull so the light from outside doesn't come in and Pete had woken and pulled it. It was very quiet and I slept very well.

Marie had left us a bottle of local champagne, a loaf of bread, and a jar of local fish pate. We had brought some food stock with us, so we had breakfast. Because we had 2 more days here, Pete decided he wanted to just hang around the cave so I left him and headed into town. Finding the cathedral was pretty easy. I had seen notes about a chateau on the map and it said the chateau today is just an art exhibit hall, so I only rode past it. I found the Tourist Information Center. We have been seeing many chateau and I thought that since this region is famous for its wines, I'd ask where to best find and tour them. Turns out the area between Amboise and Tours we rode through in a hurry in the rain is the best area. I had observed several places as we were racing by. The lady did give me a sheet describing a bicycle tour of a region just a km east of our place to see both vineyards and wineries. That would be our destination tomorrow. Then I went in search of an ATM with no fee. During that search the rain came. I continued, got cash to pay for the room, and stopped at a market to get more food.

Pete wanted some other food items beyond what had been on the list he gave me in the morning, so we headed out to a Lidl that was nearby. Unfortunately it was uphill, and the easiest (practically the only) access was by a semi major road. We made it, bought food for a few nights and headed home by a much longer but local set of roads.

29 June 2021

Today we went east a couple of kilometers to Rochecorbon to do the wine route. At the base of the town in the same cliff as our gite are other dwellings, and a sign of history along the route said one long ago was a chateau/castle. The town is cute, like much of France, and the hill was not nearly as bad as we expected. We found an old church and were reading all the history signs, which thankfully are in both French and English. We found a few wineries, but they were closed. There just aren't enough tourists to justify being open. Then we found the vineyards. Yup, grapes. We decided not to do the full route (25 km) and took a cutoff to return earlier. When we got back to town, but the other side, we saw a restaurant and stopped. I had a glass of local wine. Pete had a Belgian beer. He doesn't like dry wines and much here is dry. Then we headed home. Not an exciting trip, but a pleasant one. Maybe another time we'll be in France with someone who has a lot of wine knowledge and we can do some trips then.

I headed out to find a bakery for bread. I was surprised that Google said there wasn't anything nearby. I thought bread was a necessity in France and Germany. The first "town" west of us (second street beyond the abbey) had a Marie (city hall), but no boulangerie. It did have a pizza place and a hair salon. Rochecorbon also had a hair salon. Maybe I misunderstand their priorities?? The second street had one, as shown in Google Maps. I bought a smaller loaf of whole grain bread and returned home.

Marie and Alain invited us to go out with them for dinner tonight. The place is between our gite and Rochecorbon, maybe a kilometer away. We passed it on our way arriving in Tours and on our way to and from Rochecorbon. We knew where it was, but weren't sure where we'd meet Marie, so we accepted their offer to meet at the gite and drive there with them. It is right along the bank of the Loire. Lots of picnic tables. Stands selling beer, wine and food. There is a "tent" with a bandstand and large dance floor. Marie said that pre-Covid there would be a different band each night with different styles of music, and the floor was always crowded. It will return eventually. At least they have their tables and outdoor seating for a pleasant evening on the Loire. Alain bought the first round of drinks. They had beer and I had wine. He also bought a dish of sliced dried sausage to nibble on. As that dwindled he went and ordered some fried fish. That came with a notifying disk and he retrieved a dish of 1-1.5" long deep fried crunchy fish, a dipping sauce, and two dishes of french fries, one with ketchup and one with mustard. I saw that other tables had pitchers of beer, so I suggested to Pete that he get a pitcher of beer and one empty cup to refill our glasses (I switched) and Alain ran after him thinking he would need help. Pete was pretty much able to do it on his own, but it was nice that Alain wanted to help. It was a very pleasant evening sitting out there talking with our new friends.

30 June 2021

Four days in Tours is a lot and we still have many Chateau to see before we reach the ocean. Today we did a day trip out to the next chateau on our itinerary, Chateau Villandry.

Chateau Villandry was on the Rick Steves Loire travel episode. Marie said it was a good choice. It is famous for its gardens. Chateau Villandry is 23km from our Gite, across Tours then down the Loire a Velo route. The route through the city is not obvious. We found a bike rental shop along it almost across from the Tourist Information center. Pete wanted to make an adjustment to his brakes. We brought tools, but not a wrench. They had an air pump (he also wanted to further inflate his rear tire-we have my tiny pump, but it is awkward to use), and wrenches, but all were too small. They did not have an adjustable wrench. We continued on and stopped at an auto mechanics shop. They had a wrench and were very helpful in actually using it for us to loosen that nut and readjusting Pete's rear brakes. Such nice people here.

Then we continued on to the chateau. The signage stopped being visible (we probably had already taken a wrong turn), and Google wasn't helpful. We did not take an efficient route through the city. Once we got across the Cher, we did find the well marked route and followed it. We stopped at a little food stand for a snack - a chocolate crepe and a Salad du jour, then continued to the Chateau. It was well after noon already. The town of Villandry kind of jumps out at you as you approach it. Several restaurants and cafes right along a broad street, only one side has buildings, the other side is open farm fields.

This chateau is famous for its gardens, but we also bought the chateau ticket. Apparently two young people both wound up studying in a science lab in Paris, fell in love, married and bought the place as a fixer upper. It has no real royal connection, although some treaty was signed here. It is in the category I describe as a stately manor, even though it is much larger than the others we have toured that I put in that category. There is a great view of the gardens from the top of the keep, and from the terrace along side the garden. It is worth doing the chateau interior tour, although much is more of the same.

The gardens have multiple sub-gardens, the Garden of Love, with patterns of hearts and other symbols. The Garden of the Sun, with yellow flowers. The Water garden with a small pond feeding a canal. The herb garden. Then it has a huge vegetable garden with a 3-by-3 set of squares each with its own design and different vegetables. It is very pretty.

The ride home was quicker than the ride out. Pete had taken a muscle relaxant in the morning and was sluggish as we started. His back felt much better, but the medicine slows him down. When we reached town, we again lost the route. Google was a little more helpful for the return, and I knew the way once we got into the middle. Pete pulled ahead of me beyond where he could hear me. I gave up, sent him an email saying I was going to stop at a market, look at some things I wanted to see and meet him at home.

I got home about 8pm. I made a nice dinner of breaded fish, pasta and green beans with chocolate mousse for dessert. Take note that France is quite far north and it doesn't get dark here until after 10pm in the summer. It doesn't have midnight sun, but does have late twilight.

1 July 2021

Today the Tour de France comes through Tours. I had asked at the Tourist Information Center what the schedule was. Apparently they start downtown about 1pm and at 2pm start from just down the road from our gite. I shared that information with Marie. She and Alain planned to meet us at the gite and watch it with us. They came about 11am.

Before the actual race, there are all sorts of sponsor vehicles that drive by, kind of like a parade. They throw goodies out the window at the crowds. It was interesting to watch. We were by a traffic circle, so the two lane road splits. The police had stationed red and white barriers across the route to the circle, and also causing a funnel to the one lane bypass road. It was interesting to watch. Many vehicles were driving very fast, and using both lanes (opposing traffic was blocked) and then had to quickly merge into one lane to go by us. One vendor had been by just before we arrived, so several of the groups who were there had shirts with large red polka dots. It was ok that we didn't get any of those. Those people got most of the goodies thrown at them. We got several cloth bags, and a few pencils, some cookies, a bottle of water, and Pete got two green caps. He had lost one of the two caps he brought a week ago, so these were a good souvenir for him. For biking he liked that they were thin and cheap. Marie had brought four sandwiches (each was meat on a half baguette).

Then there was a time gap and the cars started coming again. Two helicopters were circling in the sky. I was amazed at how fast the actual bikes went past us. They were all in a crowd, following a lead car. This was the warm-up stretch, from downtown to 1 km east of us. They were bunched, and not spread out, so that made it go by faster. They came and they went. Then it was done and everyone left. We walked back to the gite. Said good bye to Marie and Alain and it was over.

We watched some of the Tour on the TV in the gite. They were already half way to Amboise by the time we turned it on and found the right channel. Then they showed an aerial view of Amboise and the Chateau Royal d'Amboise, then Clos Luce. Then they were on the south side of town going past the Pagode de Chanteloup, which is on the south side of town, just a short way from where we stayed in Amboise last week (we had looked at it through the gate, having missed its open time and the admission was too high for what it is). Then at Chateau Chenonceau. Beautiful aerial views of these places, plus they added some prerecorded segments about them. Very nicely done. Then we turned the TV off. I did a little school work. It doesn't go away.

We decided to spend the last afternoon again downtown, having a coffee and pastry and seeing the "old town." Many of those houses were built in the 15th and 16th centuries. They now contain lots of bars and restaurants. On the way home we saw a bar along the bank of the river and stopped for a beer. It was a nice way to end our time in Tours.

2 July 2021

It is time to leave Tours. We had already taken a day trip to see the Chateau Villandry, and today as we headed out of town we drove right past it, but continued past it. We stopped to see the confluence of the Cher and the Loire, and sat there on a boat that was parked on the shore and had our lunch. Then we continued on to the Chateau Langeais, which Marie said was really good. It was nice and there was a super view from an old scaffolded ruin that was adjacent to the castle. A shop in town advertised free wine tasting with your chateau admission ticket, so we stopped and tasted two wines. Pete didn't like either of them. I felt they were okay, but also different than what I'm accustomed to. I really need someone to go on these adventures with us and give a little bit more guidance on what we are tasting and what we should expect or not. I will still decide whether *I* like it or not, but can express things better. We then left town and headed to our other Chateau for the day Chateau Azay-le-Rideau. This was a little bit further away. On the way to it as we entered town we saw that there were a couple other chateaus in that town we had to pass up, or leave for another trip. We visited this chateau, and then did the journey to our hotel.

As we got to this hotel the woman was expecting us. She knew who we had to be by process of elimination. The hotel was not full. There was a couple on the patio eating dinner whom we had passed a couple of times earlier in the day. They were a little bit older than us, more like Pete's age plus a little, and had e-bikes. So whenever we stopped they would pass us and then they would stop for something and then we'd pass them. It was interesting to run into them again and we all laughed.

3 July 2021

Our hotel was literally 25 meters from our next chateau, Chateau d'Ussé. Pete decided he did not want to see another Chateau, so he told me to go in alone. He spent his time wandering by a branch of the river Indrie looking at birds and the natural environment. I was adequately entertained the chateau. It was nice and had many outbuildings and they claim that this chateau was the one to inspire the sleeping beauty story, or maybe just the set for it. Part of the chateau is set up to tell the story of sleeping beauty with mannequins and little storyboard clips in English and French. It was cute.

We then got back on the route along the Loire. The ride along here was quite pretty. We stopped at a few places that caught our eye to take pictures. We reached the Collégiale Saint-Martin de Candes church. This is where St Martin is buried. This is the end of the bike route that Pete found described by an interactive map on the web. This was not the end of our trip, but does mark when sights become more sparse. I hiked up to the viewpoint behind it for the view, leaving Pete to rest by the bikes at the entrance to the church. There was a chateau along this stretch we didn't intend to stop at. It is now an art museum. Pete was interested in coffee at a spot with a view, so we went to the chateau museum's Cafe and had a coffee there. It was up on a hill and the cafe had seating on the restaurant's roof. That offered a great view of both the river and the chateau. Pete didn't like the price of the coffee, but we were paying for the view.

Further on the route detoured us up a hill away from the road. That turned out to be a nice detour as it took us by several wine caves. As we were stopping to think about where we were and to take some pictures of the scenery, a man came out of one and said that one was the best. He called the owner over, who then invited us in and gave us a tour. One cave was all black on the walls, because that's where they actually squashed the grapes, so there's a lot of biological vapor that was absorbed by the walls on which mold can grow. The other cave only had caskets and bottles, so the walls don't get any biological vapors to attract mold. We tasted two wines there and one we liked, so we bought a bottle. The price was very reasonable - under 5 Euros. The down side was we had to carry it.

Our destination today was Saumur, which we reached in early evening. Rather than going directly to the hotel, as we passed through downtown we stopped at the big square where all the restaurants and people were and picked a table and had dinner there. It was nice. Then we headed across the bridge as the hotel we picked was on the island that divides the two halves of the city. It was a nice hotel and the staff was very helpful. Our room had a view of the river. We went out again later in the evening before settling down to explore the island and get an idea where we'd go for bread in the morning. It was nice walking in the dark city with little traffic.

4 July 2021

At breakfast Pete wanted some stuff from the grocery market. So rather than just going to the boulangerie we had found on our walk the night before, we got out the bicycles and bicycled across the river into downtown to the market. We were there at 8:30 and the market didn't open until 9. We used that time to explore near there while we waited for it to open. The was a cavalry "school" nearby. We did our shopping and then returned to our room to eat.

We went to the Chateau which was up on a hill. Pete decided he did not want to visit that chateau either, so he stayed down in the city and I walked up there. There was a great viewpoint from near the chateau from where I could see the river and the city. The Chateau was quite interesting as well. While I was there it rained (downpour) so I had to carefully make my way from one part of the Chateau to another. Then as I was about to leave the chateau it rained hard again, and I paused to wait for that to pass. Then as I got down to where my bike was parked and unlocked my bike, again it started to rain and I had to wait for that. Luckily I was parked under a cover. Then I was able to look for where Pete was on Google maps and make my way over to him. He had done some bike repairs and then was sitting at a coffee shop using their internet to surf the web. Now it was 3:00 p.m. as we were leaving the city and just starting to make our way west.

We made many short stops at churches along the way or to quickly eat the lunch we had packed. It was approaching 9:00pm by the time we reached Angers. We had an idea from the web of a hotel we wanted to book. We had trouble with the web interface trying to book the room with low bandwidth, which was a theme that repeated itself several times. We rode to the hotel to make the booking in person. Accidentally we stopped at a different hotel next door. The lady at the desk gave us a very good price on a room, so we stayed there even though it wasn't the one we planned on.

5 July 2021

After breakfast we rode our bikes to the Chateau d'Anger. This was a defensive chateau awith many towers, and a black and white stripped stone layers. It is most famous for the resident of it having commissioned a tapestry about the Book of Revelations which had many many panels. They have recovered most of the panels and have them in a museum inside a new building they built inside the Chateau complex. Our tour started there. We didn't read every little description of every panel, but got the gist of what was there. I read the whole Bible as part of EFM including the book of Revelations. It is pretty bizarre at times. All the catastrophic stuff that happens as evil and good battle are depicted in this tapestry. We were told that when it was commissioned, it was designed to show how the good king was fighting the evil enemies and the diseases, trying to make the people around him feel more assured. I think only the nobility would have seen it and been assured, so I'm not sure how effective that approach was then. From that part of the Chateau museum we went through others sections and there it was interesting as the exhibits showed what life was like for people in general during that period, and showed how historians extracted information from the tapestry to fill in some gaps about life such as costumes, horses and weapons of the time. I found that quite fascinating. For instance protective chainmail for the warriors was converting to sheet metal articulated armor, which was much more tightly fitted and contoured the body. They claim that this led to a change in the fashion for the nobility and then everyday people, and thus the need for the industry of tailors to sew clothing with specific forms rather than loose closing tied on by a belt. We spent 4 hours there and could have seen more. Then we returned to the hotel room to rest a bit. We went back out on the bikes to tour around the city. A few things were on the tourist map, but there was quite a bit more to see as we deviated from the things that were labeled and accidentally found them.

We did our nightly research for a restaurant for dinner in Google Maps, and picked one out on the street near the hotel. They had a sign on their door saying they were full for the night. We wandered around that district further, eventually looping back and picking out the restaurant next to the one we started at, but hadn't noticed as we walked past it looking for the first one. There Pete could have a pizza and I had some great sauteed chicken with noodles. I could have had fries. I had the sit down dinner I wanted, and Pete had the fast food pizza he wanted. Finally we are both happy both with the Chateau and with the meals.

6 July 2021

The next destination after Anger was Nantes. There wasn't much between Anger and Nantes and they are far enough apart that it would require 2 days to travel. So today was just a distance day. I was hoping we'd get to the town of Ancienis tonight, but we were tired. We were not that far along when we wanted to stop, so we stopped at the town before it, Mauges-sur-Loire. We found a B&B on Google and walked up to the door. She had an opening, actually three openings. We got our room and two breakfast for 70 euros and it was a good breakfast.

7 July 2021

We weren't expecting to see anything noteworthy in the town Mauges-sur-Loire, but we detoured before hitting the trail to go up and see the Abby. Even though we had breakfast at 8:00 a.m and the abbey was not open on the interior, by the time we started moving it was 11am. We stopped for lunch when we reached Ancienis at noon. There were several other bicyclists at the cafe across from that town's Chateau. Finally we were at a restaurant during the day to be able to have the plat du jour, which was a simple steak fried with a butter sauce and french fries. I wish we had coordinated our lunches more frequently to avail ourselves of the midi meals.

We got into Nantes about 5:00 p.m. I had been coordinating with a friend I met when I was on sabbatical in Nancy France to meet for dinner. We scheduled dinner for 8:00 p.m., which gave us plenty of time. He picked a creperie in the hopping part of town. We are now in the region of Brittany and our friend is very proud of Brittany, where he is originally from. He explained how the crepes there are a little bit different from crepes in other parts of France, and where people from Brittany are proud of them. I had the special, which was Italian. Pete picked one with mushrooms and a cheese sauce cream sauce and then Pete and Christophe had a type of dessert that came with the crepe wrapped in a cone shape served in a martini glass. Mine was laying flat with some nice pistachio ice cream on it.

I'm glad that I was able to connect with Christophe again. We have exchanged emails multiple times in the past 6 years. He had saved a T-shirt and a CD from an event right after I left Nancy 6 years ago, and finally gave it to me that night. When I was in Nancy I was part of a folk choral group and did French folk dancing at the Community Ed Center. That's where I met Christophe. Our choral group was invited to record and participate in a festival. That recording was on the CD. (here you can access a copy) Sadly I had looked for the husband of our choral director when his picture popped up saying "6 years ago today" on my phone several months ago and could not find his email. I searched for him in Google and found that his wife our choral director had passed away a few years ago. She was relatively young and so that was extra sad.

Christophe said that the next day he had free and if we wanted he would take us driving into the countryside, That was a very generous offer and we gladly extended our stay so that we could do that.

8 July 2021

We went to see the Chateau Nantes in the morning then grabbed a quick lunch. Pete wanted to try out the city tram so we arranged with Christophe to meet at a tram stop outside of town. We bought our tickets and went in the opposite direction for a while, turned around, came back into downtown, and then headed to the meeting point with Christophe.

Christophe took us to the town of Clisson, which is famous for having an Italianate appearance. Somebody early on decided they like that style, so they commissioned some buildings in that style, and then others followed it. This town had a chateau which we only walked past. It also has two rivers that converge there. There were lots of people on sit-on-top kayaks floating down them, including through a chute over a weir. It looked like fun, but it was way too cold. We had a snack at the marketplace and sat under the market roof. Here the market is at least 600 years old, and you can see the different wood parts. Some have been replaced, but you can tell that some are older.

On the way home we decided to stop and have dinner together again. We stopped at another popular part of downtown Nantes and picked a restaurant/bar. Pete picked out a bottle of rose wine and we ordered the charcuterie plate for four even though they were only three of us and sat and ate that. I'm so glad we got to catch up with Christophe.

9 July 2021

We are nearing the end of our journey. On the way out of town during our travels the previous day I had seen signs indicating where the Loire à Vélo was located, so I knew where we wanted to go. On the way out of town we stopped at the Les Machines de l'île, which is a park with some kind of a science museum. It is very famous for a humongous mechanical elephant, so we biked around looking for the elephant. We could not find it where it was labeled on the map. We went back to look in the exhibit hall as it was the only place it could have been, even though the areas of that hall that were behind walls were too small to hide a large mechanical elephant. Suddenly we saw it, because it was walking down the aisle outside the exhibit hall. We got to see it moving. Apparently the map shows its base location, but it takes trips around the campus giving well-paying tourists rides upon its top. Pete saw a sign that said that the Burning Man festival that takes place in Northern Nevada near us is a sponsor of this museum. That was an interesting connection.

Then we headed on our way. Christophe thought we'd get to the town of Paimbœuf, and sure enough that's where we wound up stopping. There were no hotels there, only a couple of B&Bs, one of which was not available because the owner was taking a vacation and the other had really poor reviews. There was also a campground. Pete checked out the cost of one of their units, and while it was expensive for what it was, it was available and right there so we could stop right then. We took it. I had wanted to stay in a campground as yet another different form of places to stay, adding to our diverse list - tower, chateau, farm/mill, cave. Look at the picture. It's a cute little trapezoidal shed on stilts. The front of it is creatively set up to make a picnic table so you can eat there as well. The one thing it did not have was an extended roof so the bicycles could sit under it out of the rain. Because so many units were empty, we parked the bikes under a different unit so our bicycles were out of the rain during the night.

We played ping-pong for 10 minutes before the office closed. Like so many places the time during which the pool is open is way too abbreviated and we arrive too late to go in before it closes and depart too early to go in before it opens. We think that it was heated by a wood or coal burning stove in a nearby building so it might have been nice and it was somewhat enclosed by glass walls.

10 July 2021

This is our last day. I rode to buy bread at the bakery and we had breakfast sitting on the makeshift picnic table the front of our cabin. Then we headed out. By then the rain had started, so we had our rain gear on. We lost the route of the Loire à Vélo shortly out of town. We were trying to find a way back to our destination Saint Brevin when the rain picked up and got heavier. We passed by a farm and we pulled in to one of their garages that was open to get out of the rain. The farmer came out and I asked him if we could stay while it rained. He was very understanding and said yes. He and his wife brought out water for us, then they brought out lunch for us, which was half a loaf of bread and some homemade pate. That was so nice of them. I think we would have done the same, as we are always picking up strangers and inviting them to our house or to join us for something.

After we finished eating the rain let up and actually blue sky started coming out and we made the last 20 minutes of our drive and reached finally St Brevin and the Atlantic Ocean. Hooray!! We took some pictures, and went to the tourist information center. We were thinking it would be nice if we could take a boat instead of a train down to La Rochelle. It is about 200km down the coast. Sadly the woman said that not only was there no boat going down the coast, there was also no train going down the coast, and we should ask at the train station in Saint Nazaire about other trains. She was doubtful there was one to La Rochelle. We had lunch at a boulangerie, then rode our bicycles north to the pickup point for a shuttle across the bridge.

The Loire River at this point is very large, and there is a massive car bridge spanning it at this point. They do not want bicycles using that bridge, so the community provides a free bicycle shuttle, which is a van towing a trailer specifically with equipment to strap in 7 bicycles. We got strapped up and headed over the bridge. We headed to the train station expecting we could reserve our train for the next day, but at the information desk she said that there were no trains that would take bicycles going from there to La Rochelle. Uh-oh. Now we have to recalculate. Rather than staying in that town for the night and beginning our journey the next day, we immediately found a local train to take us back to Nantes. We stayed in Nantes for a night and I was searching for routes to get us to La Rochelle. Through the German train website I was able to find some pieces. Nothing shows it going all the way, but you can piece together from one town to another. I tried several combinations. Unfortunately the high-speed train does not take bikes. The Intercity does, but you need a reservation, which is almost impossible to get, especially in short order. A lot of routes are being replaced by buses run by the train system, which do not take bikes, so it's hard to find trains that go where you want to go that even exist.

11 July 2021

We should be relaxing and celebrating now, but instead we're fighting with trying to get our bicycles to La Rochelle and eventually Pons. I thought we'd have no problem getting up and getting the 9:10 train out of town, but we don't move that fast. Even getting up at 7:30 we did not make the 9:10 train, so I had to recalculate how we can get to La Rochelle as I'd already set up a lunch meeting with some of my colleagues there for Monday. I was able to find a way that required us getting up very early the next day from Tours and Pete agreed to get up and make it real rush the next morning. We hung around Nantes until the next train heading east after 1pm and saw some things in Nantes we had missed out on when we were here a few days ago. We wandered through the botanical gardens. They had the Opera performing in the park. We took the train to Angers and again had 3 hours there to see more things in that town. Then we took the train to Tours and got a hotel room right by the train station to make the next morning easier. I went to the train station to get tickets for tomorrow, then we went to the Old Town that we wandered through in our previous last night here. The finals of the European Soccer Cup was on the screen with England playing against Italy. We found a bar with an empty table, ordered two beers, watched some of the game. On the way home we stopped to pick up some noodles, then went back to the hotel room ate the noodles and went to sleep.

12 July 2021

The train departs at 6:10, so we had set the alarm for 5:00, got up, went just a short way down the street to the train station, got on the train, got the bikes set and tried to do our best to mimic sleep as the train rolled on. We had a half hour layover in the town of Poitier. Pete wanted a coffee and wanted to eat something in the lounge, so we took the bikes up the elevator, down the hall, down the elevator. We found the lounge and it had a coffee machine. Shortly thereafter the signboard announced our track and we had to work our way back to the right track. We got on board and were barely seated as the train started moving, but we were on and heading to La Rochelle. We got to La Rochelle around 9:30 in the morning. There was a festival going on in La Rochelle we had not anticipated, and like most of the rest of the trip we did not have hotel reservations. We checked the Ibis as the night before we had a great deal in Tours. They did not have anything on Hotels.com and we stopped in to inquire in person. Their price was $180 which we declined. We picked another place further out of town for $65 that maybe we should not have chosen. We should have spent $120 on some other hotel instead, but it worked out okay. We went had a coffee overlooking the harbor, wandered a little bit, and then met up with my colleague for lunch.

Jean-Christophe had reserved a table at a restaurant on the top floor of the aquarium and the lunch was absolutely delicious. I had chicken with little tiny pee filled tortellini. Pete and my colleague both had a great piece of salmon. We did not stay for dessert, because I was going to meet another colleague who was not available earlier for a coffee. Jean-Christophe walked us to that meeting point. We had coffee with Mickael. It was great to see both them again. I will see them in September in Lausanne at our big conference.

We headed to our hotel to drop off our stuff before going to see a little bit more of the sights of beautiful La Rochelle. By the time we left the hotel room the weather had changed. It had cooled off, so going to the beach was scratched from our itinerary and we just rode around town instead. We grabbed a light dinner at Pete's favorite restaurant Burger King. I let him choose the restaurant as he feels that he too rarely gets to choose where we eat. After dinner we went and sat on the shore and listened to a little bit of the concert, but the wind was too much, so we left to go back to our room and catch up on some of the sleep we did not get the night before.

13-14 July 2021

Pete met somebody when he was wandering around India 20 years ago, and he bumped into him several times during that trip. They kept in touch. Andy has a small property in the little town of Pons France. Pete visited him there 4 years ago at the end of one of our European trips when I was at a dance fest in Austria. Pete has been excited to come visit here again and relax here for a few days. Pons is the fourth stop on the local train out of La Rochelle, thus the visit to La Rochelle.

After we got into town Pete wanted to stop immediately at the market to buy food. We detoured to the grocery store and then made our way to Andy's house. As Andy had predicted the weeds had overtaken the walkway and the side yard. Andy has been unable to visit in the past 2 years because of Covid. We followed his instructions and found the key were able to get into the house. We started airing out the place and removing weeds as a thank you to dear Andy for letting us stay there. We had a nice dinner of a pork steak and vegetables with pudding cups for dessert.

The next day I was going to ride quickly into town to get some fresh bread for breakfast, but Pete decided to join me an wanted to go to the big E.Leclerc again to get a few other things in addition to bread. We had breakfast when we got back at 11am.

It is time to start thinking about leaving France and returning to the US. To get into the US we need a negative Covid test. In Boise you needed 2-3 days to get the results, and the test can’t be more than 3 days old. That means we need to figure out where to get a test in France. We hadn’t thought of that until this point. Today is a federal holiday in France, Bastille Day. That means things are either closed, or closing early. We knew there was a pharmacy at the E.Leclerc. It is such a big store, we thought the pharmacy would have Covid tests. We rode back there to check. We got there just before they closed, but no, they do not offer Covid tests. Maybe the pharmacy across the highway does, but hey are closed for the holiday. Back to Andy’s place. The wifi signal is poor at Andy’s but I tried looking. I wrote to a dear friend of mine in France and he checked around on our behalf. He speaks French, knows the system in France, and has good internet and a real computer. His conclusion was not promising.

We rode our bikes into town. Pete wanted to visit a restaurant he and Andy frequented in past visits, Le Café Du Donjon. This is opposite a medieval castle or dungeon. We were passed by all the emergency vehicles of the town who formed their own Bastille Day parade. We walked around the Donjon grounds, then sat down for a meal. We used their wifi and looked for flights. Pete wanted to stay in Pons several days and our original plans were to do so. Our original plans were also to do the Loire part of the bike ride in less than 4 weeks, not that we had a particular duration in mind, but we didn’t think it would take us so long. We WAY underestimated how many sights we would stop to visit (and I’m glad we stopped to see so many things). I also thought Andy’s place would be a nice place to sit and do work, but the internet access and setup wasn’t sufficient for work. After some disagreement and looking at flight options, we bought tickets for three days later, and decided we would depart Pons the next day for Paris. We also rebooked a room at the same hotel in Paris we had been at a month earlier for the first night, and Pete made another reservation right by the airport for the second night. The internet said that we could get Covid tests at the Charles de Gaulle Airport. I made appointments for us early Saturday morning for the test, so we would have results (hopefully negative) before we had to be at the gate. The flight departed at 12:30pm.

15-17 July 2021

Thursday morning we had breakfast, put things away to close up Andy’s place, and around 11:30 started walking toward town. The bikes were staying here. We were carrying the duffel again, each of us holding one handle, plus we each had our panniers in our hands and I had the backpack part of my panniers on my back. It was slow going on foot. We were able to hitch a ride to the train station after only a short amount of walking.

At the train station we looked for the train options. There would be one going each direction eventually. I found our options to get to Paris were better from Bordeaux than from La Rochelle, so we planned on the train to Bordeaux. I eventually settled on a BlaBla Car trip to Paris. This is a ride share service. With weak wifi it took a while to get the account and the reservation (and I had to communicate with a very patient guy to confirm there was room for both of us). He was even willing to let us pay cash if I couldn’t get BlaBla to work. It eventually did after we were in Bordeaux. Pete hung out with our bags and the train station wifi while I explored the city a little. Right outside the train station was a little tent where they were giving Covid tests! I asked if we could get one, but was told only French citizens, but there was another setup along the river a few kilometers away. I bought a tram ticket and went looking. I couldn’t find it, but did see some of the town. On the tram back to the train station to get Pete I saw it. Too late. We wouldn’t have time to get there, get the test and get to the pickup point for the ride to Paris. We’ll stick with the airport test option.

We met our driver and he was a nice young man. He spoke English well. The car was an SUV and had plenty of room for our luggage. The third passenger in the car did not speak English. French wasn’t her first language either. So sometimes he would talk with her in French and sometimes with us in English. We made one stop along the way for toilets and food, and got into Paris around midnight. We took the metro to Place San Michel and walked to our hotel.

Friday we had a whole day in Paris, but without bikes. We had a slow breakfast, left our bags at the hotel desk and wandered around town. We walked along the Siene, past the Louvre, and stopped to sit for a while in the Tulleries Garden and eat our lunch. Then we continued along the Champs-Élysées toward the Arc de Triomphe. A few blocks before the Arc de Triomphe was another tent with Covid tests. I asked here, and yes, they would give a test to anyone for 30€. I reread the description I had downloaded a document the US government gave the airlines to decide if tests were valid, checked what test they were offering. It matched. I filled out the form on my phone and gave her my credit card, then helped Pete fill out the form on his phone and we paid again. We both had our noses swabbed, and continued walking. We took the metro back to our hotel, picked up our bags, and took the RER to the airport. By then we had an email saying our tests were negative. I cancelled out early morning appointments at the airport. We could sleep in.

For dinner Pete saw that the airport had a Marks & Spencer grocery store. That was just a 250m walk from our hotel. We hung out watching TV in our room that evening.

Saturday we finished our packing, ate our breakfast, and walked to the airport. Getting our bag checked by the airline was easy, but the line to do exit immigration was very long. Security was short because the inflow was limited. We got to the gate early enough, but not extremely early. We boarded, found our seats, and sat back for a long flight back to the US. Our trip to France was done.

We got to Dulles Airport fine. We had several hour layover before our flight to Albany, where we were going to visit family on our way back to Boise. During that wait were storms on the east coast and our flight to Albany was canceled. We immediately found a hotel, and went there to wait it out and sleep. The website didn’t show any alternate flights for 2 days. After 6 hours on hold with the airlines (much of it spent sleeping) I get a beep on my phone at 2am. There was a 1pm flight. Sorry there isn’t anything earlier, was that ok? Yes!

We spent 2 weeks in Scotia visiting family. We stayed with my cousin and godmother Shelly, spent time with my sister and her husband who recently moved back to Scotia from San Diego, and with my father. Then we returned to Boise for the little time remaining in the summer before I had to begin full time work again.

We are already talking about our next bicycle trip. Maybe Italy, maybe the Danube, maybe Ireland. The physical riding was not nearly as challenging as I thought it would be. Maybe if we had done less sightseeing it would have been, or if we had been with someone else who wanted to push the riding it would have been. I’m glad we took the time to see so many things. We met so many nice people along the way I hope we will keep in touch with in some form. I now know that I can do it, and am eager to do it again.

• 5.25 hours

• 103 km

• 105 m up, 134 m down

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/58000+Nevers,+France/Gien,+France/@47.3439407,2.6136438,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47f04f5e20402f61:0x58f94858a803848!2m2!1d3.162845!2d46.990896!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e55e9216da55b5:0x3338301469a8bf05!2m2!1d2.624758!2d47.698059!3e1?hl=en

• 4 hours

• 80 km

• 92 m up, 141 m down

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Gien,+France/Orl%C3%A9ans,+France/@47.9004868,1.9377861,13.96z/data=!4m59!4m58!1m50!1m1!1s0x47e55e9216da55b5:0x3338301469a8bf05!2m2!1d2.624758!2d47.698059!3m4!1m2!1d2.6304319!2d47.6816313!3s0x47e55e9051cd71b9:0xa73d76f6efeca47b!3m4!1m2!1d2.478032!2d47.6909449!3s0x47e543ae3ba587a1:0xc339b41c9719405f!3m4!1m2!1d2.4851247!2d47.7322265!3s0x47e5427bfb3d7b79:0xcdb3305db671a860!3m4!1m2!1d2.3468281!2d47.7779773!3s0x47e51520e75d1ad9:0x6bf9e23b0aa721e6!3m4!1m2!1d2.2950002!2d47.8034199!3s0x47e51416fa962fc9:0x918a9a9380f0b4ab!3m4!1m2!1d2.183315!2d47.8460787!3s0x47e51a6c3b2e2283:0xb5fe43a73b61d777!3m4!1m2!1d2.1512257!2d47.8496914!3s0x47e51bb2e2112bfd:0xb8b793f9403ee403!3m4!1m2!1d2.1206876!2d47.8677779!3s0x47e51b7a27e7c16d:0x9b772beb52e0097c!3m4!1m2!1d2.1042781!2d47.8688747!3s0x47e51c85c16696f3:0xdca2064d318d1578!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e4e4d49df386e3:0x9eb97de479c38029!2m2!1d1.909251!2d47.902964!3e1?hl=en

• 4.5 hours

• 84 km

• "mostly flat"

This leg has two major Chateau on it:

• Chambord (grandiose)

• Cheverny (early 16oos, hounds)

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Orl%C3%A9ans,+France/Chambord,+France/Cheverny,+France/Blois,+France/@47.6457069,1.4794798,12.64z/data=!4m31!4m30!1m10!1m1!1s0x47e4e4d49df386e3:0x9eb97de479c38029!2m2!1d1.909251!2d47.902964!3m4!1m2!1d1.4917112!2d47.6564024!3s0x47e4a4b638e62015:0xc2a4e154e4d4cce0!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e4ba959cee7dbb:0xed3cbc500da2fad5!2m2!1d1.516878!2d47.614158!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e4ada8126658fb:0x40dc8d7053827c0!2m2!1d1.46013!2d47.49973!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e3579523c8d25d:0x40dc8d7053829b0!2m2!1d1.3359475!2d47.5860921!3e1?hl=en

• 3.5 hours

• 67 km

• 253 m up, 275 m down

Major Chateau:

• Château de Chaumont (After Blois)

In Amboise:

• Château du Clos Lucé (home of Leonardo DaVinci)

• Chateau Royal Amboise

• Chateau Gilliard

Near Amboise

• Chateau de Chenonceau (16th c renaissance palace)

Loire a Velo route:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/41000+Blois,+France/Ch%C3%A2teau+de+Chaumont/Ch%C3%A2teau+du+Clos+Luc%C3%A9/Tours,+France/@47.3927763,0.6822111,14.83z/data=!4m71!4m70!1m20!1m1!1s0x47e3579523c8d25d:0x40dc8d7053829b0!2m2!1d1.3359475!2d47.5860921!3m4!1m2!1d1.3016831!2d47.5580107!3s0x47e3564b94cb3c49:0xdee380371e306054!3m4!1m2!1d1.2903902!2d47.5175879!3s0x47e355d70ed366a1:0x5581448785260fde!3m4!1m2!1d1.2716023!2d47.5033251!3s0x47e354371063a9a1:0x62cf5ab71d5d9461!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e352f88536801f:0x1ea27e2e0fd9aa2b!2m2!1d1.181916!2d47.4790337!1m35!1m1!1s0x47fcb57961d050cf:0x7fe601d9d87baa67!2m2!1d0.9921753!2d47.4102775!3m4!1m2!1d0.9546744!2d47.4048598!3s0x47fcca57933e2c19:0xa703c8a9abab7655!3m4!1m2!1d0.9435057!2d47.4006797!3s0x47fccbaca2bb2f37:0x89bfba8f4638175e!3m4!1m2!1d0.9175197!2d47.3901662!3s0x47fccb93f5618f8f:0xc18a61e454c2b616!3m4!1m2!1d0.8727836!2d47.388443!3s0x47fccc470c209a1f:0x4eece3d4db1c0c12!3m4!1m2!1d0.8584613!2d47.3844838!3s0x47fccdcad5c947bf:0x1b00336df5b9546c!3m4!1m2!1d0.8513473!2d47.3867184!3s0x47fccdc9b8724131:0xa4b4632fcd9776a7!1m5!1m1!1s0x47fcd5b34a979a55:0x40dc8d705388430!2m2!1d0.68484!2d47.394144!3e1?hl=en

• Chateau de Villandry (gardens)

• 
  

Possible Hotels:

• Hôtel Du Manoir - 2 Rue Traversière, 37000 Tours, France

• 4 hours

• 73 km

• 215 m up, 223 m down

Outside of Tours are two major Chateau:

• Chateau de Villandry (gardens)

• Chateau Langeas

• Chateau Azay-Le Rideau

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Tours,+France/Ch%C3%A2teau+de+Villandry,+Rue+Principale,+Villandry,+France/Ch%C3%A2teau+d'Azay-le-Rideau,+Rue+de+Pineau,+37190+Azay-le-Rideau,+France/Avoine,+France/Candes-Saint-Martin,+France/@47.2934713,0.1010495,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m57!4m56!1m5!1m1!1s0x47fcd5b34a979a55:0x40dc8d705388430!2m2!1d0.68484!2d47.394144!1m30!1m1!1s0x47fd2e5b3c5fbe13:0x9906a15696bd139b!2m2!1d0.5143152!2d47.3398534!3m4!1m2!1d0.5126368!2d47.3358522!3s0x47fd2e496678af69:0x37e47bee9b2d37ad!3m4!1m2!1d0.5105486!2d47.3167867!3s0x47fd2fb8f35f26e5:0x57c36a255c8d5b2c!3m4!1m2!1d0.4832321!2d47.3123438!3s0x47fd3021c4468de1:0x7a2f82a6fdd1632a!3m4!1m2!1d0.4741597!2d47.3084025!3s0x47fd3016f60bb1cd:0x15b88a80edbf3cda!3m4!1m2!1d0.4807544!2d47.2974379!3s0x47fd30044fad6157:0xad1e9c7dd07f1e6!1m5!1m1!1s0x47fd3add7de067bd:0x78b51e78111a6166!2m2!1d0.4657361!2d47.2590231!1m5!1m1!1s0x47fd436776a922ad:0xbe525e07692418e!2m2!1d0.181982!2d47.205697!1m5!1m1!1s0x47fd5ea5cb78db71:0x40dc8d7053891a0!2m2!1d0.074696!2d47.210797!3e1?hl=en

• 3.25 hours

• 62 km

• "mostly flat"

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Candes-Saint-Martin,+France/Angers,+France/@47.3203609,-0.3917422,10.27z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47fd5ea5cb78db71:0x40dc8d7053891a0!2m2!1d0.074696!2d47.210797!1m5!1m1!1s0x480878da00e58e9d:0x40d37521e0d9c30!2m2!1d-0.5518257!2d47.4711616!3e1

• 5 hours

• 96 km

• 116 m up, 140 m down

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Angers,+France/Nantes,+France/@47.2789849,-1.0448512,10.1z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x480878da00e58e9d:0x40d37521e0d9c30!2m2!1d-0.5518257!2d47.4711616!1m5!1m1!1s0x4805ee81f0a8aead:0x40d37521e0ded30!2m2!1d-1.553621!2d47.218371!3e1!5i1

• 3.5 hours

• 68 km

• 96 m up, 104 m down

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nantes,+France/Saint-Nazaire,+France/@47.2520955,-1.8111389,12.45z/data=!4m24!4m23!1m15!1m1!1s0x4805ee81f0a8aead:0x40d37521e0ded30!2m2!1d-1.553621!2d47.218371!3m4!1m2!1d-1.7021676!2d47.2096171!3s0x4805938ddaa79609:0x831b9d70115f8637!3m4!1m2!1d-1.876534!2d47.2923509!3s0x480584c130ae0d7f:0x9b5b1739a28d2523!1m5!1m1!1s0x4805658f3cc2ef13:0x64dfe60d5e7e1f3d!2m2!1d-2.213848!2d47.2734979!3e1?hl=en

• La Rochelle

• Pons

• 
  

• Chateaux, Rivers & Wine

• 8 Days, Round trip Bordeaux, from $2399

• 96 m up, 104 m down

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nantes,+France/Saint-Nazaire,+France/@47.2520955,-1.8111389,12.45z/data=!4m24!4m23!1m15!1m1!1s0x4805ee81f0a8aead:0x40d37521e0ded30!2m2!1d-1.553621!2d47.218371!3m4!1m2!1d-1.7021676!2d47.2096171!3s0x4805938ddaa79609:0x831b9d70115f8637!3m4!1m2!1d-1.876534!2d47.2923509!3s0x480584c130ae0d7f:0x9b5b1739a28d2523!1m5!1m1!1s0x4805658f3cc2ef13:0x64dfe60d5e7e1f3d!2m2!1d-2.213848!2d47.2734979!3e1?hl=en