Il était une fois...

"Il etait une fois"= Once upon a time

Despite the strikes which caused our train to be canceled, Lindsay and I made it to the Loire Valley, chateaux country! The Loire River is the longest in France and cuts it horizontally. The famous Loire Valley is located in central France, and for a time, stole the royal glory from Paris. In the 16th century, Paris was not the nice place it is today, so the kings of France decided to migrate a bit south and build their magnificent homes along the Loire river. This was also a strategic decision, as the Loire river was the main artery of transportation of goods and people. Thus during the French Renaissance, hundreds of castles were built in this area by kings and nobles, who had of course, like moths to a flame, followed the center of power everywhere, from Paris to the Loire, and later from Paris to Versailles (under Louis XIV in the next century). Many of the chateaux were built on the site of ancient fortifications, and some of the "chateaux" are actually fortresses, and not royal residences, those the latter are of course, the main tourist attraction.

Francois I was the first king to establish the Loire as the new center of France, and while his main residence was the chateau in Amboise (pictured above; also where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last 3 years as architect and painter of the king), he had several other chateaux built, some of which he visited only a handful of times (no wonder France was going bankrupt by the mid 18th century!). Other kings followed suit, and while the money may have been better spent buying peasants bread, luckily for us, there remain many gorgeous chateaux to visit today, allowing us all to feel like kings and queens, if only for a moment.