Amboise - Sunday 1

I have a little apartment with a garden including an apple tree and a pear tree. ( I may eat the apples and pears, Madame told me.)  I have just returned to it from the big house, where we had dinner.   The big house is just over the way, the big garden is populated with chickens and poodles, and there are huge vegetable gardens.  We ate salad from the gardens, then fish with a superb sauce, then cheeses (five different kinds), and then we were offered dessert, which even Igor the big Russian-German from Munich, had to decline.

Fly has fallen on all four legs here!  (It is not the original accommodation I was allocated to.  An email a couple of weeks back said I was changed to here.  Good move I think)

Madame Germain met me at the Amboise station and gave me a tour of the town before bringing me home.  It was only 3pm, so I set out again on foot and explored.  It is a wonderful old town, dominated by the Chateau, and of course, spread along the Loire.  It seems to be a centre for exploring the Chateaux of the Loire – there are lots of tourists – busloads, but also many on bikes.  The country is great for riding, not too hilly.  The maps and signs point out how far the chateaux are by bike.  Chenonceaux is 9 klm.  I might hire a bike next weekend and go there.  I am going to enjoy the afternoons here – wandering around is a delight.  There was a group doing traditional dancing on one of the Squares this afternoon, accompanied by three musicians.  One planning an instrument I have never seen before – there is a pic, also videos of the dancing.  It was very sedate dancing, not a lot of energy involved.   

There are four other students in the Germain household.  Maria Fernanda, from Mexico, has a room in the big house.  Beside my apartment is another in which Igor and Sebastian (German) are staying.  They are really interesting young people (I am granny, of course)  Maria Fernanda speaks Spanish and English and is here polishing her very good French, before she starts Philosophy at Uni.  Igor speaks Russian, German and English and has passable French.  He is a fourth year medicine student in Munich.  Sebastian has fluent English, German of course, and pretty good French.  He is studying Political Science in Berlin.  Madame Germain speaks only French, so French it is at dinner.  (Our “half-board” means lodging and dinner each night, but that will keep me going if it is always like tonight). 

I suspect this language school might be a lot more serious than the Over 50s Course in Kitzbuhel.  I will have to convince them I am on holiday.  The test tomorrow is both written and oral, I have been informed.  I am preparing a little speech in French about being on holiday.  Bon soir.