Villandry

Woke this morning to glorious sunshine and the sun coming through the trees with dappled light. Very pretty looking out our window to the garden.

We had made the decision to have an easy day and cycle to Villandry to see the chateau.

We set off through town in the sunshine and headed out the way we had originally come into at the beginning of the week.

Bike path the whole way back to Villandry.

We had a slight concern about the way to go but we knew we were heading in the right direction so headed off and before we knew it we were back in Villandry at the church we had passed on the way through on Saturday where a wedding was taking place.

A lot of these old buildings are so old when you go inside that the smell of damp and musty sometimes can be a bit overpowering. That was how it was in the church so didn’t spend a lot of time in there.

By this time we seemed to have lost the men and we just had the 6 girls so we headed down to the entry road to the chateau and there was a cafe and boulangerie. It was coffee and cake time and OMG the pastries.

After having the best coffee since being in France we headed up to the chateau and there was 2 whole huge areas for bike parking

The wonderful thing about visiting all these chateau’s is that if you show your ticket from the last one you visited you get a discount on the next one which is such a good idea and makes it so much more affordable to go and see these amazing places.

Being here at this time has been great as even though it has been both hot and cold there have not been heaps and heaps of tourists and sometimes we have been wandering around and been the only people there.

So the Villandry Chateau what an amazing building and the gardens are all vegetables

The gardens were all designed on the original renaissance designs back in the Middle Ages.

It took us well over 2 hours to see everything. There was even a maze which we had to try our hand at.

The chateau is still owned by a private person whose heritage is Spanish and American who married back in the 1800s and renovated and built it into what it is today having researched the history books to discover what the chateau was originally like and also the gardens. It was spectacular.

All throughout the chateau in every room the flowers were fantastic and the smell of the lilies and the roses was beautiful

We ended up in the gift shop and knew it was time for lunch and a glass of wine.

It was time to head back to La Jagee as it had been a big day.

When we got back to La Jagee we sat on the verandah in the sun and now we are all showered and dressed up and having pre dinner drink in anticipation of tonight’s special dinner that Kerrie and Kerry have cooked for us this evening as a last night on our trip.

So it is the end of a lovely day and tomorrow is our last day in the Loire and we have a lovely last day planned.

Bon nuit mes amies.