Les Chateaux de la Loire!

As my stay here continues my ability to speak french confidently increases daily :) The most intimidating of situations while speaking french has to be the phone call, and even worse, a phone call to someone that doesn't know you're not a native french speaker and probably won't have the same patience with you as your wonderful host mom.... So! A phone call then to a hotel receptionist in Paris should be on the top of the list for most intimidating situations! So tonight, having made myself entirely phyched out, I dialed the ten numbers of the cute traditional french hotel and started my conversation with a shaky bonjour? I struggled through the first sentence of "Is this the l'Hotel-de-Lille Louvre?" And when the receptionist quickly answer ouais? I started my reservation. After then having to spell out my last name, Byczkowski, in the french alphabet, which might I add is ofcourse different then the english alphabet (for example, y in french in pronounced igreck, and w is double-ve), the receptionist made a sound like wow, what kind of a name is that? And I became confident that yes! She did understand me! And continued with telling her numbers confidently and telling her the dates right and now, I think I have officially over come the fear of speaking on the phone in french!, and I have a reservation in Paris for 3 nights and the most adorable hotel ever! So two positives come from that experience :)

Now! On to the subject of this blog!
Last Saturday my University took all the exchange students on an "excursion" to the castles of the loire river. They were absolutely gorgeous as anyone would expect, and I have some beautiful pictures :)

I arrived at school at 7h50 and we left at 8h03, meaning, they literally didn't wait for anyone!, If you were late, you missed the bus!!! So after about an hour and a half of driving in a HUGE tour bus on TINY french streets we arrived at the first castle with our cameras out feeling like real tourists lol :)

 This one's called Azay-le-rideau

Azay-le-rideau

The morning fog on the castles moat

The TINY street we drove through and that leads right up to the castle.

Just so you all know, I have more pictures of Azay-le-rideau, its just my camera died right after I took these pictures, so my friend Amelia is going to be sharing her pictures with me :) So probably in a couple days I'll have another post with the other fun pictures she took :)

So after we left Azay-le-rideau, we drove for about another hour or so to Chenanceau! :D This is probably the castle I was most excited to see because it was the one I knew the most about :) I know it was built by Francois 1er for one of his wives, and all the pictures I've seen of it are gorgeous, so I couldn't wait to see it in person!....

This is the walk way up to the castle, if you can, click on this picture and make it bigger and look at the branches of these trees, they're amazing!!!

This in the entrance way to the castle, notice the two Sphinx, pretty odd for a french castle right? Apparently it made perfect sense for Francois, the sphinx show that he has knowledge on other cultures, like Egypt, and he also probably felt a connection to the Pharaohs because they were in a sense both rulers by divine right? That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

This is the view once you pass the Sphinx, Ah! So exciting ! It looks similar to the front view of Azay-le-rideau but surprises lay ahead!!!!!....

So! Once you get in front of the castle, you can see that they're actually two buildings!, I think this one was Rapunzel's castle :) Its the perfect size though! 

This is actually the castle Chenanceau, and thats me and my friends!

From left to right, me, Irena, Maria, Kelsi, and Amelia! :)

And thissssss is the surprise!!!!! This whole castle is built over the Loire river! The left part of the castle is actually one long ballroom......

Here's me in it!!!!, but the reason that picture is a surprise is because until you walk to either the far left or right of this castle, you have no idea that it's over the water like that! So, it's a surprise :)

Here's a painting of Louis XIV, probably my favorite French King because he knew how to take advantage, or well how to handle being an Absolute Monarch lol, I'll hopefully have some more information on him and his lifestyle after I visit Versailles, which I have sworn to myself I will definitely do sometime while I'm here!!!!

Here's one of the beds in Chenanceau, beautiful and impressive.

This is me in front of Chenanceau and the mini castle :)

After we left Chenanceau we had about another hour drive before we arrived in Chambord, which I think was one of the most impressively intricate structures I've ever seen! There's apparently 356 chimneys, and around 400 rooms, which is HUGE! The castles architecture was beautiful though. There is in the middle of the castle a staircase designed by Leonardo da Vinci! It's called a double helix staircase, I unfortunately don't have any pictures of it, because a picture couldn't explain what we experienced! The way it worked was one could enter the staircase from opposite sides of the hallway, but when you enter the staircase, you are actually on a completely different staircase then your friend. And while you're walking down the staircase, there are several windows where you can see your friend, but what really gets you is, you never, NEVER run into them! Because your on completely different staircases. Haha maybe the idea sounds simple, but the experience was definitely exciting and slightly mind-blowing lol. Anyways!, Heres the castle!!!!...

This is me posing with another different staircase I found extremely beautiful, and I made it my goal to eventually make my way it!

Here's the same stair case from a different angle as I was trying to find a way to get to it, which I had to try to do fast because after about 35 minutes at the castle we got a nice french announcement saying the castle was going to be closing in 15 minutes! So, as Amelia said, we were fast castling!!

This is on the roof of the castle, and the top of DaVinci's staircase, this to me is stunning.

Here's the view from the roof, I can tell now why Kings felt so powerful!, This view makes you feel confident in saying, This is My Land!!!! lol

AH-HA!!!! After running around for about 10 minutes stressing to find the staircase, I made it!!!!!! 

So that was my lovely castle trip :) I will have more pictures of the actual trip in a couple days and possibly more pictures of other random things happening in Angers, France!