Amboise

In Paris this morning and in Nazelle-Negron and the chateau country this afternoon.  The 2 1/2 hour trip was easy along France's A-10 freeway and the scenery was enchanting; and enchanting is the only word for our bed and breakfast in the small town across from Amboise called Nazelle-Negron (pictures will follow).  We had lunch and our first real chateau sighting at Amboise.

A picture of part of our room--you can see the scenery out of our window.  More pictures will come in tomorrow's blog.

So then we drove into town and had a wonderful lunch of escargot, lapin terrine and nice pieces of beef and pork, ending with an amazing cheese tray all served by some very friendly staff:

Afterwards, we forced ourselves to sample French gelato (not as good as Italian so far) and bought some quiche for dinner.

Then off to Azay-le-Rideau to see the chateau there--just as we got into the chateau it started raining for which we were thankful because it had become a hot day. 

The chateau was beautiful but they ran out of English tour books so we did not really understand all that we saw.  Bummer!!  It was raining too hard to walk the gardens and we were so tired that we headed back to our beautiful room.  I guess there needs to be a few negatives to such a beautiful room--one, it is up twenty very narrow steps and two, it was hotter than blazes when we got back since it has no air conditioning.  Thankfully the staff found us a fan and the temperature is much more bearable.