2005 Letter from AMBOISE, P 1: One of the places that we had missed in 2002 was Amboise in the Loire Valley, east of Tours. That was a big mistake. When we got here this trip, we loved it. First of all, it is beautiful. Our guidebook refers to it as a "Renaissance town", that is, later than medieval. Its "Chateau" is a huge, beautiful royal castle on the river, surrounded by other buildings of great beauty and age.

Somehow this town has managed to accommodate a very large number of tourists without being a tourist trap. That would be enough to love Amboise, but there was so much more. There are flower beds everywhere, and they are all in bloom. People are very nice. The Sunday marche (open-air market) was absolutely great. Added to all this, a very short distance from the royal castle on the river is a chateau which a French king (Francois I) bought and gave to Leonardo de Vinci. Leonardo spent the last three years of his life here. The town bought the chateau from its modern owners and turned it into a very interesting museum.

The Clos Luce (pronounced Klow Loosay), the DaVinci chateau, is furnished in the style that was current in Leonardo’s time, which in itself is interesting. The downstairs rooms feature a superb collection of models of machines that "The Master" drew in his lifetime. None of these things were actually produced then. These were just theoretical drawings. The task of creating actual models was given to IBM. Everything was built to Leonardo’s specifications. They included several types of cannon, a tank, an airplane of sorts, a parachute, a helicopter roto, paddle-wheel boats, a drawbridge, military bridges, a bicycle, a self-propelled car, ball bearings, transmission gears, a pile driver and more. Many of the actual designs have been "invented" over the past 400 or 500 years. For example, armies still use DaVinci’s design for a temporary bridge. And his way of building a bridge that swings to the side to open has been around for a hundred years. Of course, modern versions are made of different materials in slightly different shapes, but these things really work.

But we get ahead of ourselves. We came in on Saturday and found the campground. The town built a wonderful campground on an island in the middle of the river. It is easy to get to, beautiful, has good facilities, and is inexpensive—11 Euros a night, including 10 amps of electricity which is enough to run everything we have. As we checked in, we were told that there would be a marche the next morning, and of course, we decided that the outdoor market would be our first stop. Everything else could wait. So we walked across the bridge on Sunday morning and found the market not too far away alongside the river. We didn’t miss a single stall. There was fresh fruit and vegetables; bread and pastry; roasted chicken, duck and turkey; huge wok-like pans of paella; crepes; wine of the region; clothes; flowers and plants; cheese of the region; processed meats; fabrics and linens; twenty kinds of olives; candy; and fish. (Picture 3 shows the four pans of paella cooking for sale. What it doesn’t show is the huge line of people waiting to buy!) This does not exhaust the list of what was available. In fact, although we came knowing that we didn’t really need anything, we bought a lot. Adelle’s favorite purchase was a piece of oilcloth printed with a traditional Provencal print of wheat and olives which now graces our RV’s little table.