France 1 June 2011



Chateau Villandry and gardens

 Wednesday 1 June 2011

The renaissance gardens at Villandry Chateau were stunning.  The Chateau was built in 1536 but the gardens were completely revamped in the early 1900s along the lines of how gardens were laid out in France during the Renaissance. The gardens were the biggest we have ever seen and it took us over two hours to walk through the ornamental gardens, the woods, the water garden, sun garden, the maze, the herb garden and the vegetable garden. With the sun shining it was just beautiful.

                                                         

A short drive took us to Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau a castle built on an island in the middle of the Indre River.  We took the audio tour of the rooms and it provided a history of the renovations of the rooms and the lives of the most illustrious occupants of the house but it gave so much detail that my head was spinning from trying to keep track of who was who and who did what in which century.  It also didn’t help that some smarty pants must have moved the stands with the audio tour numbers on them so we were hearing say the narrative for room 10 when we were standing in room 14 and wondering why we were hearing all the details of a painting which wasn’t hanging on the wall!



The front of Chateau d'Azay-le-Ridau





Chateau d'Azay-le-Ridau