France Trip Day 2 - March 12

This was one of my most favorite mornings in my life. We woke up to the faint glow of dawn and a hundred birds chirping in the trees. I looked out the window at all the hazy fog and and snapped a picture. I told Kenny we just had to go out and enjoy this morning! So we put on our running clothes and went for a little jog on these gorgeous country roads. There was still fresh dew on all these farm fields and we watched the sun rise and breathed in that cold morning air. It was perfect. On our way back we saw a swan floating gracefully by on the lazy stream. Then we went back and got ready for the day. This sweet old couple that owns La Flanerie had created such a romantic setting. There was a warm fire crackling and popping behind us with soft music playing and the most delicious French breakfast. It's my favorite meal of the day, and everything tasted so good. It was so good to have a real baguette in my mouth!! We ate SO much bread during our trip it was awesome. Pretty much breakfast was similar every morning we stayed anywhere. Baguettes, yogurt, fresh fruit or fruit jam, pastries and hot chocolate. I would recommend this B&B to everyone!

Steph and Andrew were out too!

From there we had a short drive to Chateau Chaverny. The real descendants still live there! They live on the 3rd floor, so only the first two are for tourists. But they had these huge family history charts that show both sides and all the royal families they descend from and their respective coats of arms. It was really cool. That's my favorite thing when touring all these places is just to think about the real people living their lives all those years ago. This was their home or their village just as I have my home and city to live in.
Not sure how I didn't get a picture of this (we have recording) but they own 70 hounds and keep them there on the property. They were so funny! There's very strong family traditions of hunting, so there's always been horses and hounds kept there and they keep that going. Very cool.

These horns were from an animal that used to exist and was hunted in these parts (wish I could remember the name). But the antlers are hung at the same height that they would be in real life. So it was a pretty darn big animal.

 Fun to think about all the families that raised children in these walls for so many generations.

 This wedding dress was I don't know how many years old but it had pictures or paintings of lots of the royal family getting married in it, including the most recent lady who's still alive and living there.

favorite room in the house :)

There was also a cool maze they made in the gardens. It was actually a really good maze and took us a little bit of time haha!

From there we hopped over to Chateau Chenonceau. This one was built on a river--just to be cooler than all the other castles. They went bankrupt pretty much but still continued to throw huge parties just to impress people and be popular. There were fresh flowers kept in every single room! They were so pretty and smelled so good. It is really cold in the castles with those huge stone walls. We loved the rooms where they had the fires going in those huge fireplaces!

This is a picture out of a window so it's not very good, but you can see where they would pull up their little boats to unload the food. Those steps go directly into the kitchen. How neat is that!?

By the time we got out we had missed lunch time. So that was one thing we learned the hard way--they are only open from 12-2 for lunch. If you don't come in the restaurant before then they will not serve you. Many days we just had to grab what we could at a boulangerie (so grateful for those! I love them so much). There's always treats to be had there :). Today we stopped at a little town called  Blere and ate there. This day was full of driving and getting lost :). We had decided to not get a GPS in the car to try and save some money. So it led to a lot of navigating between Kenny and Andrew from an atlas we picked up at a gas station. They were so great at figuring out all these new places. We wouldn't have made it out of the airport if it were up to me! 

We had lots of normal tourist things like problems with credit cards working and having a hard time filling up and paying for gas haha. It was a long drive to Sarlat, but we eventually made it. We got lost along the way (a lot) and it was dark, which made  it harder. We had no way to call our B&B and let the lady know we were actually coming. We once again missed dinner hours and everything was closed so we had to stop and grab some pizza (thankfully they were open) and brought it with us. By the time we got to where we were staying it was about 10 p.m., Bernadette was super angry and just started yelling at us in French. It was quite an experience and got my heart pumping and had us all flustered. We weren't trying to be mean and inconsiderate Americans, but that's exactly what her perspective was. We tried to explain in our imperfect French what happened. She finally calmed down once she realized the situation. We stayed there 2 nights and she ended up being really nice and helpful, but it was a rough start.

Oh yes we did.