FRANCE 1 - Chateau of Chambord

In June, Aaron and I went to...FRANCE!  It was fabulous!  We spent 4 days in the Loire Valley and then 4 days in Paris.  I wasn't sure how to blog about it all since we did soooo much and I took over 900 photos...yep, almost one thousand!!!!  And how do you throw that much into one post?  I decided to break it up day by day.  

So here's our adventures of the first day:

We left Utah in the morning and arrived in Paris in the morning of the next day (major jet lag), but we hit the ground running and drove a few hours into the Loire Valley.  We really wanted to see The Chateau of Chambord and it was on the way to our B&B, so we went there first.

We were amazed to learn that this chateau was built as a hunting lodge for King Francis I.  It wasn't a residence.  In fact, he only stayed here for 72 days.     

This double-spiral staircase is one of the features that makes Chambord famous:
 
Chambord has 77 staircases, 282 fireplaces, and 426 rooms.  There is very little furniture, but there were quite a few details that I thought were pretty cool:

 

The chateau sits on 13,442 acres surrounded by a stone wall.  It is the largest enclosed forest park in Europe and it's a national game reserve.  Supposedly, there are a lot of deer and wild boar!

The architecture was amazing!  It's believed that Leonardo Da Vinci had a part in designing it. 

After our visit we headed to a small town to check into our B&B...more on that later, but it was so charming!  Then Aaron and I went into the nearest town, Chinon, for dinner and ate at a little street cafe...my favorite!

 

There is a chateau that overlooks Chinon that we hiked up to, but didn't go inside.  There were some nice views of the little French village:

Chinon has a lot of history involving Joan of Arc.  This statue of her is in the center of the town:

It was a great start to our trip!