Day 7 July 16, 2007

Chinon, France

We woke up and ate a lovely breakfast in the gardens of Noizay. Afterward, Matthew went to the front desk to get some help in dealing with the rental car exchange – no luck. 🙁 We are going to have to figure out something before leaving Bordeaux in a few days because the trunk just isn’t big enough to hold all our luggage, and we don’t want to leave it visible when we park the car to go sight-seeing. The weather was rainy, so it was a great day to hop in the car and tour goat cheese farms and local wineries. We drove through Tours again – a nightmare to navigate this time! – then headed south toward Sorigny to find the fromageries as described on TripAdvisor.com. We finally found a farm but the proprietress was eating lunch and asked us to come back later. We drove on and found a farm that let us taste then buy some different cheeses – yummy! We then found another farm in St. Catherine de Fierbois that would not let us taste but we bought some chevre and confit anyway! We continued on toward Chinon to find the vineyards. Our first stop was Domaine de Beausejours. The proprietress was a lovely woman who was the former marketing rep for Chanel in Paris. Her husband was a former architect in Paris, and he built the house they now live in on the vineyard. The two of them retired to Chinon to help their son run the winery. We bought 3 bottles of delicious wine! Next stop was north to Domaine Daniel Chauveau in Cravant-les-Coteau. Chauveau’s son, Cristolf, let us taste some wines then look around then buy! We continued north toward Bourgeuil to look for Domaine Butte (which we had drunk last night at Chateau Noizay) but never found the vineyard. 🙁 Then we headed back east to Chateau Chenonceau, Catherine de Medici’s chateau. The grounds are magnificent as is the chateau itself. There’s even a hedge maze on the grounds! We saw the farm, gardens, and the moat filled by the Cher River. We had planned to stay at Chenonceau for the sound and light show, but since it was raining, we headed back to Amboise for a quick dinner. We ended up eating at a little place called Amboiserie and had gallette and steak frites, then headed back to Noizay for a restful night.