Friday 26th – Week 2 – Amboise and Leonardo Da Vinci

Hold the phones, we have a WINNER. And today's winner is......... dah, dah, dah, dah..... the man who has a remote control for his caravan. There's an old couple parked beside us with a very large caravan, which they had somehow turned completely around, so that the door faced towards the river and the nice view. As they are leaving this morning, we were all prepared for the manouverings of the 4WD and lots of heaving and grunting to hook the caravan up to the car, but no. Anne watched in stunned amazement as the man stood beside the caravan, remote control in hand and turned the caravan round to now face the correct way, then lined it up with the car, manouvered it over the tow ball and when all the work was done, simply connected it to his car.... Now that is impressive.

We appear to be living in something resembling a war zone, with little mounds of dirt piled up all round the place. New mounds appear every night, as the local mole population goes about their work digging up the ground all around the tent. This morning we awoke to find 3 new mounds and one resurrected mound. I flattened one yesterday, which obviously had a mole sleeping under it, cos it was all pushed back up again this morning. Apparently, worms love the sandy ground the campground resides on, and moles love worms, so its a happy mix – unless you're the campground owner. I'm kind of expecting one to pop his little head through a hole in the tent floor one night, while we're asleep.

I got in touch with my girly side today, when I bought 3 pairs of shoes. I think I made the sales ladies day, not by buying 3 pairs of shoes, but by requesting a pair of socks to try the shoes on with, and then when she had the drawer open grabbing a pair of women's stocking instead. There was a good reason for wanting the stockings, but who's going to believe me, so i'll leave it by saying that all the women in the shop had a great laugh at this man with his funny French trying out shoes in woman's stockings.

Incase you were wondering, we went to Amboise today. It's a pretty little village about 20ks away, with a chateau that we aren't visiting, because we're over them. But what it is most famous for is Clos du Luce, which is Leonardo Da Vinci's last residence. He lived there for 3 years before he died. The house is now a museum. It's a big house, it overlooks the Chateau that was the home of Francois I, who was the king of France. It had lots of his “inventions”, which were things that he sketched designs for, but because he had no means to power them, they were never able to be built. Being so far ahead of his time, he had drawn designs for things like parachutes, helicopters, machine guns, tanks, military (movable) bridges.

We spent most of the day in Amboise, because a.) it's a pretty little town, b.) I bought 3 pairs of shoes and c.) we had an awesome lunch. I had a goose gizard salad, which despite it's name was really nice. For my main, I had an very spicy sausage, which I suspect came from some equally exotic parts of a range of animals. Anne had a Terrine entree and salmon and hoki for her main.

We had a lite dinner at the campground again, and have now purchased a small table, in the form of a blue hard plastic box, so that we have something to put our nibbles on, while we sit on our camp chairs. We realise that this is letting the side down completely, as there are some very exotic camp tables that you can buy, but with our extremely restricted space, we don't have room for any of those sorts of things.