On their kind invitation, we joined Bob and Sue Greig for a quick trip to Chateau Amboise in the Loire valley for the weekend. We had a wonderful supper on the Friday night and spent Saturday exploring the chateau and its environs. The Chateau is most famous as the resting place of Leonardo da Vinci. It is where he spent the last years of his life. It is an interesting story (and better told on Wikipedia than I can manage). The visit solved a mystery for me, which is "why does the Mona Lisa hang in the Louvre and not somewhere in Italy? He brought three of his favourite paintings with him from Florence: the Mona Lisa or "La Joconda" as the French call it and the famous one of St. John the Baptist pointing skyward. I can't remember the third. But this is, I suppose, why these paintings are in the Louvre; they simply stayed in France. As you can see from the photos the day was spectacular. I wasn't able to take any of the house where Leonardo lived, but it was a lovely home down beside a small stream that joins the Loire at Amboise.
View the photo album or slideshow.
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