Chateaux de la Loire Part 1: Chateau D'azay-Rideau

You are about to get a glimpse of my childhood imagination, thoughts, and dreams.  I have always had an intense imagination and as the years have passed the stories and the people have changed.  With age comes wisdom, which is fabulous, but age also brings a loss of innocence and naivety.  I realize that I am still a young little thing in the grand scheme of things, but as I have gained wisdom over the past few adult years of my life I have learned about a lot of really sad things.  I read or hear about stories all the time of people in so much hurt and pain.  Since I have such a vivid imagination their pain becomes my pain and I continually live with the burden of a stranger's despair.  Fictional scenarios run through my head all of the time of terrible things happening to the ones I love; there are times that I have almost come to tears in the middle of the day because I have imagined loosing someone I love.  My innocent imagination of youth has faded as I have gotten older and I had forgotten about the wonderful world my mind used to live in.

A wonderful thing happened to me Sunday that changed all of this, I was re-introduced to my childhood imagination.  The long forgotten tales of a young girls trials and tribulations.  When I was a kid, my brother Spencer and I would spend hours and hours every day (rain or shine) outside in the trees building forts and creating fairytales, or in our room with our toys taking them on wild adventures.  One of my favorite things to imagine was being a young girl who lived in an old castle with tons of passageways and  forests all around to play in.  (note of clarification:  I was a tomboy and these tales never included being all princessy or older and glamorous, I always liked to imagine being the servant girl or the rebellious young daughter who didn't want to be proper but her mother made her...ect.) In fact a lot of my imagination stemmed from reading the series Anne of Green Gables twice before I was 10 as well as my mother reading Laura Ingels Wilder to me every night before I went to bed.

Sunday morning I got on the bus not really knowing what to expect, but as I watched the French countryside roll past it was like I was traveling farther and farther back in a time machine.  The rolling hills, the tiny villages, quaint country cottages with ivy growing up the sides and a small garden next to it...it was fabulous.  I stepped onto the bus a 22 year-old woman with worries and stresses running through my mind; I stepped off the bus a 10 year-old girl filled with excitement of where my imagination was going to take me that day.  It took me very far.

Chateau D'azay-Rideau

To be able to describe where my mind was at is utterly impossible.  To be able to sketch a rough draft would be like writing a novel.  So I will treasure those thoughts to myself and instead explain what I saw.  The Chateau was quaint.  Looking at the pictures it may not seem that way, but read part 2 and part 3 and you will understand.  There was a small moat that surrounded the chateau as well as all different types of trees and foliage. The building itself was simple and elegant.  There were many small details that were exquisite, but they were not too loud or overdone.  The grounds surrounding the chateau were so beautiful.  I went on a little adventure and walked through the paths and trails.  I even found some wild berries that were so delicious and I have no clue what they were!  (this completely shocked a classmate of mine that I would even think of trying them...I told her I like to live life on the edge.)

It was hard to leave such a tranquil place, I wished I could have stayed there all day.  However, two more Chateaux were on the agenda for the day so I grudgingly made my way back to the bus with mixed feelings of sadness and excitement for my next adventure.


Here are some more pictures!