Right, I had my nature break now it was time for some culture. We woke ourselves up with some coffee and took a leisurely stroll up into the village to the entrance to the chateau of Azay-le-Rideau. The pathway was marked with cute little metal “AR” buttons.
We coughed up our tourist euros and surrendered my monopod – tripods/monopods not permitted in the chateau. Walking sticks or trekking poles fine, but not rubber-footed monopods, apparently.
Francine went into the chateau for a gaup while I remained outside studying line-ups of the chateau itself. This is the one I chose, using the cameras built-in keystone correction which, incidentally, shows up in Lightroom perfectly well but not when I export it – the export has the converging verticals back. Weird. Pretty for a pile of old stones but weird. [This is a screen grab of the corrected perspective shot.]
We wandered back into the town and found an appealing small bar selling Grimbergen Blanche beer, and very nice it was, too. At €4.60 a glass it should have been, too. I did enjoy the old plaque on the wall over the outside patio area, though: loosely translated, “here, on 23rd February, 1854, absolutely nothing happened.”
We spent another enjoyable afternoon in our lazy-le-Rideau campsite. I wandered along the riverbank again but nothing new offered itself to the camera, unsurprisingly.
Dinner this evening was Paupiette de Lapin avec sauce Champignon. I don’t think there’s an English translation of a paupiette but they are like little pillows of meat, in this case rabbit, stuffed. They’re very tasty and go well with a mustardy mushroom sauce. It is also Coco de Paimpol season and we couldn’t resist those as a veggie accompaniment.
Delicious.
Leave a Reply