Amboise

Day 1

Getting to Amboise was quite the journey.  I had to take a train from Lorient to Nantes, another from Nantes to suburban Tours, and a final train from Suburban Tours to Amboise.

After getting on the first train and travelling for about 10 minutes I realized that I’d forgotten something really important – my camera.  So I called Auntie Rosie and asked her to look for it.

When I’d arrived at my hostel in Amboise it was 4 pm.  I quickly used the WiFi and then set off to explore the town.  Its quite a cute little city.  I’d show you a photo, but unfortunately I don’t have any…

After exploring the city and picking up some food for dinner, I returned to the hostel (which had seemed deserted earlier), to find a bus-load of kids unloading.  Grrr, these must be the worst children invented.  All night long they were running up and down the halls “whispering” and slamming their doors.

Day 2

I’ve discovered that the school kids wake up, and make a lot of noise at 8 am, but are gone by 9 am – so today I decided to enjoy the peace & quiet and sleep in.  In the end it seemed I slept a little too late, because when I awoke I had a hard time getting a toilet/shower because the cleaners had already begun working.  Oh well!

Once showered and changed I called up a tour company to enquire about a trip to Chateau Chennonceau in the afternoon – no luck there, since nobody else was booked they couldn’t run the trip for just me.  So I set off into town to rent a bike to go to the Chateau.  I got a half day rental from a shop called Veloc, and was on my way.  The bike was the WORST thing I’d ever used.  It was so broken, even more broken than the old Canadian Tire Supercycle bike that I ride to/from the C-train station.  On this bike the front derailleur was totally broken…the last user had actually bent it so bad I couldn’t even get it to make contact with the chain.  But at least the rear derailleur worked….most of the time.  So, instead of having an 18-speed bike, I had a 6 speed.  Oh, and the route to Chateau Chennonceau was very hilly….meaning that I had to get off the bike and walk quite a few times.  While frustrating, at least I made it to the Chateau in the end.  The Chateau was very nice, it really made me wish that I hadn’t forgotten my camera (so yes, again there’s no photos of this either). After biking my way back to Amboise from the Chateau, I told the merchant about the broken bike, then carried on with my evening ritual.  I went shopping for dinner (this time adding in a bottle of rose wine – it was a long day), then ate outside on the bank of the river.

Oh, and Auntie Rosie shipped my camera to me today via FedEx, it should arrive tomorrow J

Day 3

Today was quite exciting, filled with lots more biking than yesterday.  When deciding to come to the loire valley I’d decided that I would do a cycling tour of the winery region.  So in the morning I rented a bike (from a different merchant this time), and set off (this time doing a tour around the block to make sure all the gears worked).  The fellow at the bike shop told me it was about 15 kilometers to Vouvray (my ultimate destination being a winery just beyond Vouvray called Marc Bredif).  While cycling I decided to take a different scenic (read: much longer) route, following the “vignobles a velo” (wineries by bike) path. This was good, but added quite a bit of time to my journey.  While on that path I didn’t really see any wineries either, I just saw a bunch of grape fields. It wasn’t until I was back on my original path that I started seeing wine merchants.  I stopped at one and bought a bottle of their Vouvray white wine.  I then continued on to Vouvray.

Once you entered Vouvray it was like, Bam!  There were wine merchants everywhere.  I went to the tourist information centre, and the girl advised me against going to Marc Bredif, because it was still a ways away and would require me to drive on the main highway.  She had me convinced for a while, but in the end I decided to go anyways.  I’m really glad I did, because it was only about a 5 minute bike ride from the tourist office.  I also found out that she was using the term “highway” quite loosely, the max speed on that road was 70 km/hr.  So I arrived, did a wine tasting, and ended up buying a bottle of white Vouvray wine for myself and a bottle of red for Colin.

Getting back to Amboise was quite the adventure.  I missed the bridge across the Loire, so I ended up riding along the “highway”, then turning around and going back into Vouvray.  I eventually found the bridge, but once I crossed I couldn’t find the bike path (well I did, but it just took me in a giant square and spat me out onto a “highway”).  So I rode along the “highway” to get back to Amboise.  At one point a  driver honked at me, and I thought that meant I wasn’t allowed to be on that road, but I passed many cyclists on my way back, so I guess he was either encouraging me or he’d had a bad day.

Nevertheless, I arrived back in Amboise, unloaded my purchases onto my hostel room (I had also stopped at a Litl to get some food), then I went to the train station to book my tickets to get to rock climbing on Friday.  My transport plans have changed a bit, tomorrow is a holiday, and this weekend is a long weekend, so a lot of the train reservations are sold out….so I am taking the least direct route possible to get to Marseille – but at least Ill make it to climbing on time. 

After dropping off my bike, I took a quick stroll around town and returned to the hostel for dinner, a shower, did some packing and went to bed.

Sad news….my camera didn’t arrive today.  The flight it was on to Paris was delayed, and since tomorrow is a holiday it won’t make it to Amboise until I’m already gone.  So I’ve gotten them to re-route it and keep it at the Paris FedEx station, I’ll go pick it up there once I arrive in Paris.

Day 4

Today I spent most of the day in the town of Amboise.  Since it was a holiday, there was nobody at the reception desk of the hostel, so I had to cart all my stuff around with me all day.  To help prevent this I spent the morning on the beach of the Loire around the hostel.  After eating lunch there, I decided to visit the Chateau Amboise, it was not as impressive as the Chennonceau, but it was still interesting to see.

After the chateau, I walked to the train station to catch the trains that would get me to Manosque for rock climbing.  It took me 4 trains to get to Manosque (including one overnight train).  The voyage I took was Amboise to suburban Tours, suburban Tours to Bordeaux, Bordeaux to Marseille (a night train where I thankfully got a couchette), then finally Marseille to Manosque.....arriving in Manosque for climbing Friday morning - but that's a story for the next post.