To backtrack a day, Danny and I went to Chantilly on Friday, February 10th. It’s a town about 20 minutes outside of Paris where the famous Chantilly cream was first made (so delicious) and is home to the chateau that was home to the cousins of the Bourbon kings, most notably Henri d’Orleans.
So after we got off the train and walked about 20 minutes, we saw this really epic building that appeared to be the chateau, but then we couldn’t see any real visitor entrance…turned out it was the horse stables. The King and the Duc d’Orleans were always competing to have the most horses, and this time, the Duc won.
After grabbing a much needed bread/pain au chocolat at a nearby boulangerie (yes, this is probably the most frequent thing I do here) we made our way over to the real Chateau. I don’t want to bore you with description too much, so I’ll let you see for yourself:
Frequently being in France is actually like being in “Beauty and the Beast” and this library was one of those moments. That, and seeing a fountain in a square in Beaune and thinking/singing “Little town, full of little people, waking upppp toooo saaaaayyyyy BONJOUR!!!” I don’t have room for the even more epic library, but I actually like this one better. We paid for the tour of the private apartments of the duke so those were tres swanky.
So after touring the chateau and the beautiful (cold and damp) gardens that we technically sneaked into, we went in search of some very late lunch because the tour guide for the hours-long tour had been late. We finally found a place that was open and I had an okay salad and THE MOST MAGNIFICENT HOT FUDGE SUNDAY EVER!! Vanilla ice cream, chocolat chaud, and chantilly. And it was amazing.
All in all, a pretty wonderful, educational, beautiful, and tasty day!