A Whole New World: Chateau Central : Life in La Loire

This weekend we had a school excursion to visit the some castles in the Loire Valley! We visited Chambord, Chenonceau and Blois. We were also able to visit a vineyard where they typically keep wine for one hundred years!

The first castle we visited was called Chenonceau and it was quite vast. (It had a moat!) There were fireplaces inside and some of them had fires going! Surprisingly, they did a nice job of warming the room. In the castle, there was a random room with a touring art exhibit. It was fun to look at artwork in a castle. All of the beds were elaborately decorated, and notably shorter than ones you see today. I learned that it was because people used to sit upright when they sleep in order to preserve their wigs!

The wine cellar we saw was chilly, but that’s important to let the wine age properly. In Bordeaux, the wine tour I did was a little different, so this one was really interesting. We learned all about the proper tasting technique…First you observe the color. Lighter colors usually signify a younger wine. Also, observe the ring around the top of the liquid. The thicker it is, the better the balance between the sugar and the acidity. After observing the color, you smell without swirling (first nose) and then smell after swirling the glass (second nose). Swirling lets oxygen react with the wine and brings out more subtle smells. The third step is to take a little sip to taste the wine. In my wine class we learned that you should spit out the wine after tasting. The fourth step is to imagine what situation the wine would be good in…what food, what event, and most importantly, what people you’d want to drink it with. They had wine from every from everyone’s birth year, so some people bought some from their birth year. I bought a bottle to share with my family. This wine is special because I never like wine and I liked it!

The next day we visited Blois, where a lot of assassinations occurred! There were a lot of different staircases and at the time hallways were not common in buildings, so this was one of the first castles to have traditional hallways. In one of the rooms there were some pictures of fruit arranged in such a way that their shadow projection formed a face on the ground. It was so cool! There was a large courtyard in the walls of the castle that used to host lots of spectacles for the king.

The last castle was called Chambord, and it was the biggest of all. The whole castle was freezing, because it was really open, so there were doors everywhere where air could come in. I walked around with my hood up the whole time. There were a lot of strange rooms that had pictures of leaves, bugs, and other animals. Also, there was an “apartment” inside that was comprised of a set of rooms that were used by guests, and limited only to them and the servants who would clean them. This castle had an amazing central staircase with two parts. It was constructed in such a way that if you took one staircase and someone took the other, you’d both wind up in the same place but never cross paths. It reminded me of the staircase to exit the Vatican Museums in Rome.

Walking around the castles was so cool, and it was amazing to think about all of the history involved.

If you ever go to France, I definitely recommend taking a tour of some of the castles of the Loire Valley!