Listening to Minor Majority (2006-10-18)

Readers of this blog may know my love of the Garden State soundtrack, especially Iron & Wine, and my desire to play folk rock guitar music like Norwegian band Kings of Convenience. Knowing this it would be no surprise that when I heard Norwegian band Minor Majority's "Wish You'd Hold That Smile" on Reasons to Hang Around I was immediately interested. I walked from the back of my morning workplace to have a conversation in rudimentary French. "Did the Internet disconnect? What do you want?" they asked me. "I want that music," I replied.

Hey, I wish you’d hold that smile
Help, if only for a while
I need to know about all the things you did and didn’t do
And just how hard you tried

At Château d'Amboise (2006-10-23)

Our last stop of the day, before riding the TGV back to Paris, was Château d'Amboise. The Flickr photostream contains a photograph of the castle itself.

At Le Close Lucé (2006-10-23)

Le Close Lucé, a Leonardo da Vinci museum (and his onetime house), was inspiring because of the models of Leonardo da Vinci ideas and inventions. I was impressed that, as Wikipedia says, "He conceived of ideas vastly ahead of his own time, notably conceptually inventing the helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar power, the calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were feasible during his lifetime; modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance."

At Château de Chenonceau (2006-10-23)

After lunch in Tours, the tour group expanded and we rode to Château de Chenonceau.

At Château de Villandry (2006-10-23)

Our second stop was the gardens and castle of Villandry.

At Château Azay-le-Rideau (2006-10-23)

Our tour guide David first drove us and a British couple to Château Azay-le-Rideau.

Touring around Tours, France (2006-10-23)

Our fourth of six rail days took us from Nantes to Tours to Paris. We wanted to take an excursion that would permit us to see the Château de Chambord, but the tour was full by the time the tourist office opened. Instead, Alienor Excursions took us to Azay-le-Rideau, Château de Villandry, Château de Chenonceau, Le Close Lucé (a Leonardo da Vinci museum), and Château d'Amboise.

Taking Pictures of Cathedrale Saint-Pierre, Nantes, France (2006-10-22)

That's Ryan in the doorway within the doorway of La Cathedrale.

Riding Bateaux Nantais on L'Erdre (2006-10-21)

We rode one of the Bateaux Nantais up the river Erdre to see many châteaux, including Château de la Gascherie shown above.

Examining Eglise St-Nicolas, Nantes, France (2006-10-20)

We used the third of our six rail days to travel to Nantes for the weekend. Over the weekend we would visit, among others, the following sights: Eglise St-Nicolas on Place Royale (see above), Passage Pommeraye, Musée des Beaux Arts (buying a book on Georges de La Tour; I had previously bought a print of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Musée de l'imprimerie, and La Cigale. The latter, according to Découvrir Nantes: Guide touristique, is "One of the most beautiful 'French brasseries' in the world with its most extraordinary 1900s décor (classified as a historical site)."