In the morning we start by taking the luggage to the car so we can meet the early checkout time and then it’s time to visit Amboise. We wander for a while on the narrow streets, early in the morning there are fewer tourists and it has a more medieval and haunted feel.
We walk around through the old city center for a while and discover a croissant place that looks really tempting so we have a real French breakfast. Food is good and we feel refueled for our climb to the Amboise Castle in the middle of the city.
The castle is really impressive as it befits a castle that housed French royalty for quite a few years. We take lots of pictures but do not enter the castle as we have a full day scheduled already.
The most we do is climb to the paid entrance and walk around it, it is surprising that at that time they built the castle in the middle of the city instead of a little outside which is more usual to avoid any uprisings.
And it starts with Clos Luce the mansion where Da Vinci spent his last years at the invitation of the French king. He brought with him a few paintings most famously Mona Lisa. We walk up to the mansion – it is tiring but there are nice views of the city and castle.
There are some interesting houses on the way also that are excavated from the rock walls, people are still living there and even renovating them.
The Clos Luce museum is really interesting with lots of replicas of Da Vinci’s machines some of which you can even play around with. We do that for a while, who can resist hands on experience with machines creates by a medieval genius?
There are a few rooms that are furnished and they are quite interesting to see. We especially like the medieval beds, it would be fun to sleep in some of them in real life and to see how soft they are.
There is also a nice garden with ducks, wildflowers and a very large dovecote where the nobility was keeping their pigeons. We enjoy our walk but then it is time to return to the downtown area and the carpark.
On the way down we really like seeing the flowers and the greenery all throughout the town. Some are maintained by the homeowners while some are wild but both are beautiful.
