Our first chateau, Amboise was a good place to look at first. We saw the site where Leonardo da Vinci was initially buried - and the Chapel his body now lies in. The original Chapel burnt down so a new Chapel was built about 50m away and he was exhumed and moved. Kate had thought this was the chateaux with the models of his inventions - Darryl had seen another chateaux in close proximity that he thought was that one - with no Internet data at the time to confirm and no info centre we went with the original plan - and found out that Darryl was right! It was a nice chateau but not particularly stunning in any way, a shame we didn't get that one quite right.

We had chosen Chaumont Sur Loire paticularly for its gardens - within the grounds was a series of individual garden designs for international landscapers and designers, as well as pieces of outdoor art. We spent 3 hours there, most of that walking through the gardens. We saw lots of interesting designs - and have some good ideas to bring home to try out.

The chateaux was very pretty from the outside, and not too big, it had a lovely feel to it both inside and out. It was eell decorated with furniture and paintings, and the perfect size to walk around - not too big after we had expended so much energy in the gardens. It had a courtyard in the middle which had at one stage been fully enclosed, but now afforded majestic views of the Loire as a latter King had ordered the front side of the chateaux be removed to let in more light.
A bonus for us was that a wild deer had ventured close to the building and Darryl spotted it from the window.

We also checked out the stables which are reputed to be some of the finest in France, and they were certainly very flash. We left very happy with what we'd seen - a place we highly recommend.

We headed to another passion france site for the night - this one chosen purely for its close location as we didn't want to drive far. It was vinyard and we arrived just in time to see a load of grapes being transfered from a truck by conveyer through a seperating machine that removed the stalks and pips and through a pipe into some vats. Sadly for Darryl we had just missed the last tasting session of the day, but it was a nice site to be beside the vinyard for the evening. A brief stroll after dinner took Darryl to the edge of the vinyard where he saw three more deer on the side of the road. There are lots of road signs warning about deer as we drive, but we hadn't sighted any prior to this.

Scott; I saw 33 frogs in the ponds.
Sarah: I liked the look of the stables. Each stall was named. The tack room and the traditional riding uniform looked cool.
April: I liked the geodes art piece.