Photos: Loire Valley

A transit stop, a day in Loire, living la vida dolce (yeah, I know that is not French)

After our somber time in Normandy that was intense, we needed a break, and one of the places we were targeting was the Loire valley. This is a quasi rural area with lots of small towns, and agricultural areas. Plenty of vineyards that we didn’t visit.

We stayed at a small B&B that was a former estate. It was built into a hillside, and it was both quiet and secluded.

Yes, this house does extend into the hillside. Tres cool to say the least.

As it was off-season, we had it pretty much to ourselves. There were some more pics I took:

There were plenty of places that were deeper into the hillside. Not sure why that was built, but it is cool.

There was also a cemetery that we walked by:

Before we got there though, we stopped at the castle that I used the garden as a teaser for this post.

This was a super cool castle (or chateau) on the river Loire, and it had tons of great things to see. As a former chef, I liked the kitchen:

Clearly this was the best room!

How many cleavers does one need? Like guitars, just one more is the perfect number! There were these two wee ones that I caught being naughty:

In a chateau, one would expect that the master of the manor would sleep in style. And indeed, they did!

More from the outside, including that sketchy lady that kept following me around…

After a couple of nights in Loire, we headed to Lyon, a staging place before we headed on …

This is me taking a turn at the wheel. I will admit that I do not like driving in other countries. We got to Lyon, and had a meal …

Not sure what we ate, but it is likely that a shit-ton of butter and garlic on a cephalopods with some killer wine. Walking back to our one night there, there were some sights. Since this was a rather primitive camera, I had to use the timer, and set it on something solid to get a good exposure:

The reason we stopped in Lyon was that my better half was (and is) a huge Tour de France nerd, and her dream was to drive up to the top of one of the iconic stages, the Alpe de Huez. As a hobbyist cyclist, I recall driving up the climb thinking there was no fucking way I could ever have made it up this bitch.

And of course we needed to stop for a pick on the road:

There’s that lady again…

Now Substack is telling me that this might be too much for any email, so I will stop here, but the Alpe de Huez is a ski resort. We did get up to the top and had lunch (sandwiches and a nice bottle of wine).

Then we headed to the final destination, Chamonix. I will stop here for today.

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