Game Theory

I've talked about Ticket to Ride, a board game about trains around Europe. But that's just the tip of it. We're big into family game time, especially on cold, rainy winter weekends, and we especially love games that tie in thematically with our lives here.

Memoire de France is a memory-match game with special places around France, including many Paris spots we know and love -- one of which we can see from our window, and exactly half of which we can walk to in five minutes or less:

 

To read about more great French- and European-themed games, check out the post at A Year in Fromage.

Where Boston Hasn't Happened Yet

Here in the Loire Valley, we come across the Azay le Rideau marathon, at which nobody appears to have heard about the goings-on in Boston at all. It's quite refreshing. There is absolutely no security whatsoever, and we are allowed right up to the finish line, wearing our large backpacks, to cheer on these people who have just run 26.2 miles through castle country.

This guy scoops up his daughter just before the finish line to run across with her, where they are both greeted by a princess. Somehow, in the shadow of the nearly 600 year-old castle of Azay le Rideau, it actually seems fitting to have her as part of the celebration.

Everything is so much older here, it's as if Boston hasn't happened yet; it's in some distant future. As is, frankly, the entire United States. We eat dinner at La Boulaye and when the owner asks us what we like about living in France, one of the things we mention is the history. When we tell him that in San Francisco, we live in a house from the 1890s, and it's considered very old, he laughs. The place where we are dining was built in the late 1600s and hasn't changed much except that it's now a charming restaurant instead of a working farmhouse (but the surrounding land is still there and still being farmed).

 

Gigi is horrified by Anthony's rabbit stew, which comes in a bowl insulated by real rabbit fur. Even Pippa, our meat-eater, is a bit grossed out by this until she asks Anthony, "Did they really kill the rabbit to make that stew?" Anthony thinks on his toes and answers, "It was already dead when they bought it at the market." Which is a genius answer because a) it is possibly true and b) it completely avoids the point of the question. Still, she is satisfied by this and no longer upset. I am conflicted: Part of me wants our children to be able to eat meat in restaurants but the other part wants them to think logically and understand where their food comes from. I should point out that recently, while speaking to French friends, I mention not wanting to eat rabbits myself, and they are both shocked: "But rabbits are just pests! We should eat as many as we can!" People have probably been eating rabbits in this very spot, to keep them out of the gardens, for many hundreds of years, so who am I to judge?

When it comes to the depth of Loire Valley history, this plaque pretty much says it all, but in French. It commemorates Joan of Arc's arrival in Blois on April 25, 1429: That's 584 years ago and before the Americas were even discovered by the Europeans.

Mi Castle Es Su Castle

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the chateaux of the Loire, I do the usual fantasizing about what it would be like to live there. My fantasies do not involve large poofy dresses or knights on white horses. Rather, over the course of our long weekend, I find that I'm most attracted to some of the "fixer-upper" spaces.

For instance, the attic space at Azay-le-Rideau, which was formerly divided up into the servants' quarters, is the living area of my dreams. I'll have my welcome party for you all here, once I acquire the property, that is.

 

For my backyard, I'll take the gardens at Villandry. If I can get the gardeners to come with it.

 

My office space will be this lovely room, which looks out from the middle of the Cher river, in Chenonceau castle. I'm sure we can modernize with high speed internet wiring.

I'll cook for you in the servants' kitchens of Chenonceau. Forget the formal dining room. These pictures only show a tiny fraction of the lovely rooms that are all interconnected in a space that manages to be both sunny and cool at the same time.

 

 

I also have a real attraction to the grand hall that bridges the river at Chenonceau, though this space is hardly a fixer-upper. But I think I'd prefer it as my humble entry way. Frankly, while I'm talking Chenonceau, I'd also like this castle for the outside look of my house.

 

Though I must admit that I wouldn't sneeze at Chambord, either. This castle thoroughly stuns Pippa. As we approach, she asks, "Is that all one castle? I thought it was a whole city!" Ideally, outside of the moat and the Villandry gardens, we'd have this bicycle path meandering around for the occasional jaunt.

Riding bikes around Chambord and on the mountain bike trails in the surrounding game preserve is  the girls' highlight of the castle tours. Because, yea though we walk through the valley of the chateaux of the Loire, the girls fear no evil, but they do fear the boredom of another King Henri IV four-corner bedpost or bibilical narrative tapestry.