A Chimney for Every Day of the Year

Chambord
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Our car was dropped off early the next morning in the secured lot behind the hotel.  Driving a different car always takes a little adjustment and as I was practicing the hotel manager came out to see if I was having a problem with the car.  Great customer service again!   Our escape from Chartres (narrow streets, fast traffic) was not on the route we'd planned.  We just wanted out! Our drive to Chambord was somewhat out of our way, but Marilee was a fantastic navigator as usual and found an easy course correction.

Exterior of staircase
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Chambord is huge!  As you drive through the Domaine de Chambord, which is now a large national park, you catch glimpses of the Chateau through the trees, but you're still not prepared for its sheer size.  The interior of the chateau is largely empty and always was.  Whenever the king came to Chambord the servants packed up furniture, clothing, food; whatever would be needed and brought it along.  The same thing happened in reverse when the king left Chambord.  We viewed the tapestries and climbed the famed double helix staircase to the roof.  There are 365 chimneys on the roof with plenty of nooks and crannies in which you could have hidden.  Chambord doesn't have any formal gardens as it was considered a hunting lodge.

Relections
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Our drive from Chambord to Negron-Nazelles was uneventful until we reached Blois.  We missed the by-pass road (Toutes Directions) and wound up in the middle of Blois.  Unfortunately, the signs in Blois were intermittent at best.  We wound up circling around the same school from different directions for about half an hour.  We were pretty sure our French wasn't good enough to ask directions; if we could have found someone to ask.  After a while all we wanted was out of Blois so we took the first road we could find going out of town...which was going to Angers...quite distance out of our way.  Marilee, Queen of Navigators found a new route for us and we were back on the right track within half an hour.

Park
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On arriving in Negron-Nazelles, we couldn't find our B&B.  We circled through Negron 3 or 4 times, finding restaurants, the train station and several boulangeries...but no B&B. So, thinking perhaps our B&B was on the other side of Amboise we drove through Amboise (bad traffic) and circled around Amboise for awhile longer.   Finally, we gave up and called for directions.  We were so close when we first came into town!  15 minutes later we were checking into our B&B, Chateau Nazelles.