Chambord and the Chocolate Factory

We had agreed the night before to join Megan for morning prayers 'to see the community in action'. So at 7.20am she cheerfully knocked on our door and off we went.

Morning prayer turned out to be a beautifully reflective time – most of the prayers were sung/chanted. Obviously everything was in French but Megan was very good and handing me an English bible and pointing out what we were up to. It was a lovely, worshipful start to the day and singing (all without music) was beautiful and moving.

Then we were led over to a cottage adjoining the commune area of a couple who had set up the commune intially (I believe?). Embaressingly I have forgotten the name of the lovely lady who hosted us a scrumpious, proper 'French' breakfast. Nice Lady as we shall call her, spoke fluent english (as well as a myriad of other languages we found out) and the conversation over breakfast was all about various travels and the joys and foibles thereof. The pastries and the delicious buttery loaf on offer were so good I was convinced they had been home baked, (apparently not) and we drunk our coffee out of a bowl, which is the normal french way apparently. (This explains why so ofton the cups we got our drinks in in France had a handle so small it was mainly decorative???). Nice Lady was also full of suggestions and advice about our chateau adventure planned for the day, but underfortunately we ran out of time to head to the place she had suggested to us. 

Breakfast concluded, we jumped in the car (Megan borrowed from the community) and headed off to Chambord. There was a breif stop at the chocolate facutroy on the way to find out the times for the guided tours (not til 3.30pm) and then we carried on.

Driving through small French towns along the way.

Chambord.

Chambord was fantastic. It's a massive old chateau built as a summer house by Kind Francois the somethings and was barely used by him or any of the following kings. Louis the something was quite fond of it until Versaille was finished and then he lost interest... Frequently abandoned and a generally dismiss place to be in the winter, it had various add ons during it's life. It's main reason for existance, apart from Francois showing off his skills at commisioning and designing large chateau, was as a place to stay while enjoying the hunting and other sport to be had inside the massive swampy park that surrounds it – the size of Paris, apparently. Running up through the centre is an impressive double helix staircase rumoured to have been designed by Leonardo Da Vinci, good friend of Francois's that he was.

 

The staircase

Megan went up one staircase and we went up the other... every now and again we could see eachother through the 'windows'.

Greg, Megan and I had a grand old time exploring the rooms and listening to the audioguide with all the interesting little tidbits about being a French royal in those times. It was a bit chilly out and it was easy to see how unpleasantly drafty the place could be when it was cold! 

The art exhibition on the third floor was rather disturbing.

This was one of the tamer ones. Most of them had monkeys and lots had dead meat and things melting. It was well done, but not easy to look at. Having seen a few more art exhibitions since this, I can see where the influences came from for it though.

The views from the roof were incredible. 

I couldn't resist buying a cute bottle of 'Chambord' raspberry liquer in the gift shop and even had an exciting interlude when I thought the cashier had given me too much change (because I am bad at maths) and because she had no English she thought I was saying she hadn't given me enough – anyway Megan came to the rescue and we sorted it all out. We had savoury pancakes for lunch which were delicious and hit the spot, but we knew that chocolate would be required so off we went to the chocolate factory.

We arrived in time to peruse the attached shop before the tour started. This was enough time to realise that the chocolate creations therein were very beautiful works of art and also rather difficult to afford.  

Hamish and Sarah, we saw this and thought of you... it's totally made of chocolate (of course)!

We hummed and haaed and then the tour started so off we went. It was almost totally in French so Megan whispered translations of key points of information to us. Do you know I had no idea what a cocoa bean flower looked like or the tree that it grew on, so I found the whole thing actually really fascinating. There was a video with a good amount of English subtitles about the man who owns the chocolate company visiting the island in Africa where he buys his cocoa beans from. They showed the buff locals hard at work harvesting the flowers, cracking them open to get the beans, and then the process of drying them out in the sun etc. The video seemed to be painting the chocolate company man as a great hero for buying their beans, but it wasn't clearly established what kind of working conditions they were actually under (how long their working day/week was, whether they were getting a fair wage, how the cocoa producing industry was impacting on local food production and perhaps most importantly – why the heck were those children helping to crack open cocoa bean flowers instead of being in schoool??). But his wife was giving the locals some clothes so that makes it ok?

Anyway cynicism aside as least he seemed to take an interest in where his raw product came from. The demonstrations, albeit on film, of how they make the chocolate in the factory showed an impressive amount of skill amongst the staff. I learned about how they make white chocolate as well which I never realised. The fact that the chocolates were indeed 'hand made' was evident. SO long story short when the tour was over I bought some chocolates, over priced or no. They had these cool ones in the shape of a cocoa bean flower stuffed full of other chocolates inside. Greg and I went halves. I'm writing this a week later in Vienna and we are still getting through the thing!

So that, to scale, is roughly what a cocoa bean flower looks like, for the uneducated. 

Megan had a thing about a duck, so she bought a chocolate duck (who is called “Constance”). The chocolate ducks were very cute.

That done, we were now on a mission to get back to the commune, grab our bags, then get back to the station for our train to Paris. With the help of Greg's GPS on his phone preventing unwanted gettinglostness, we made it with a comfortable ten minutes to spare.

The place where we turned around because we were going the wrong way...

We said our farewells to Megan, and after a lovely 48hours, prepared ourselves once again for the madness that is Paris.

My pre-organised plan to metro from the Paris train station we arrived in to the one that was actually near our accommodation in Montmatre went well (much better than the disaster of getting to Nouan...). The walk from the station to the hostel was quite a bit longer than it looked on the map and uphill, but finally we made it. The receptionist was friendly and after a short respite we went up the road to a recommended 'quick eats' place for tea.

Basically it was a shop front open to the street selling burgers, meals, tortillas and the like. Targetted at the drunk and hungover and they stumbled home no doubt, but catered perfectly to our needs at after 9pm on a Tuesday night when we'd just arrived. Greg was extremely happy with his falafel meal and my chicken tortilla was tasty and filled the gap.

After mooching on the internet for too long, and with eyes that had become strangely irritated and itchy, we went to bed way too late to be even remotely prepared for what was in store the next day...