We came back to Ambroise for the evening. Despite the light rain, we walked around a little after dinner and saw some cool views of the castle at night!
Da Vinci was buried in Amboise!
Some nice views out from the castle. The big house you can see towards the back of the picture with all the windows is the manor house we stayed in!
This is a famous castle that Mom and Dad may or may not have been to before. It was a haven for many famous queens.
Our audio guides were all on Ipods!!
This balcony was not the most exciting part of the chapel, but when queens wanted to remain relatively unobtrusive, they observed Mass from up here.
A gift from Louis XIV: a portrait of Louis XIV in a beautiful frame. That's what I want for Christmas too, duh...
Our next stop was an Abbey, which was actually a lot more interesting to get to than it was once we got there. Other than the fact that Eleanor of Acquitaine and Richard the Lionheart were buried here, there's not that much going on. Though it is really, really old. And was used as a prison for many years. Apparently that was pretty common in France?
We then went ahead to Mont Saint Michel (a monastery) so that we could see it at night. This was attempt number 1, in which I was too lazy to get out of the car to try to take a picture. Yes, that crescent in the bottom left is the steering wheel.
Attempt #7. Much better :-)
Attempt 3 by Dad to take a picture through a narrow passageway up towards the spire...
Mont Saint-Michel during the day, ft. DRAWBRIDGE!
Dad: Silly sorority girls, putting their letters on everything.
Reality: Alpha and Omega, beginning and end of the Greek Alphabet and very religiously significant :-)
While Dad and I took endless pictures, Mom hid out of the rain. She might have been smarter.
In the afternoon, we went to this cathedral and a tapestry museum. The tapestry was AWESOME. It was really really really long, had writing in Latin, and showed the Norman Conquest of England. Oh yeah, and the tapestry was at least 600 years old and still in good condition! Yay!
We then went on to Rouen, city of 100 spires. They weren't kidding. I don't remember the names of all of the churches, so you're going to see a lot of unlabeled insides of cathedrals...
I tried like six times to get the whole cathedral to fit into my lens, but alas... you get the idea. This is the cathedral that Monet did the series on-- he painted many pictures of the exact same thing with the intent to show the effects of different kinds of lighting. Monet was fascinated by light.
Church designed to look like flames... why?
Because here is where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake!
I wasn't sure whether or not it was appropriate to smile in this picture...
The inside is beautiful!
Nice job, Allies. Another building they destroyed while liberating France...
Break from cathedrals to go to the Beaux-Arts museum, where my umbrella was a threat and had to be removed. More Monet!
Oh hey, we were just looking at that!
That night, we went to the Recruiting Sargent. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera and therefore do not have any pictures. Suffice it to say that we had a great last dinner together and continued the Dearing tradition with lots of bread, sausage, and wine.
And so, finally, ends the long-awaited parents post. My life did not slow down after that, oh no...
Look out for early Thanksgiving dinner, Orsay, theater-going in Paris, and the top of the Arc de Triomphe to round out the week after my parents left!
