Besides almost getting hit by a bus...

Whew...sorry for the delay in posting, friends. We got back to the hotel just when a storm broke yesterday, and I went to sleep. Except for about 30 minutes, I slept through the night, and didn't fill you in on our day. 

Geez. What a day for driving. No crashes, but we had some close calls. It all started this morning when we started out. I made a right turn, only to stare into the eyes of a not-very-happy tourbus driver. There were immigration cars stopped on the street going the opposite way, and the bus driver apparently had to get his load to the Palace asap. I backed up as far as I could, but there was another car behind me and heavy traffic, so that didn't help much. The bus driver started going forward and - I swear - skimmed by with no more than a few inches between us. It was unnerving. The wheels on the bus went round and round, almost over us. After that, we had a truck to make a close call in a round-about, parking challenges (did you know that if you get close enough to a car that your rear camera will actually allow you to see the bugs on the front bumper of the car behind you?), and several missed exits. By the end of the day, I think that Dan and I were both ready to walk rather than drive. 

But our driving got us to some cool places. We went to the Château de Monte-Cristo, which Alexandre Dumas (père) had built and then sold, two years after its inauguration. It seems that Alex led an extravagant lifestyle and had a little trouble paying for it. 

From the bottom

And the top

These are where the water would have spit out had the fountain been working:

 

One of the windows:

And a comic book... who knew?

In addition to his house, he had a little place built where he could go to write: 

And, of course, Dan went fishing: 

The nice lady at the ticket place here asked if we wanted to also visit the Marly Estate, which Louis XIV had built/created as a country escape from his country escape (aka Versailles). The palace no longer stands, but the estate has been turned into a huge park. Back in the day (the 17th and early 18th centuries), it was quite a place, complete with a system that channeled water from the Seine up to the estate via a complicated machine and a viaduct. Louis... what a guy. 

[We are having technical difficulties with google photos, so we will post pics of this later.]

We then went to our original destination, Chateau Malmaison, where Josephine Bonapart lived after marrying and then divorcing Napoleon.  The gardens were lovely and included lots of roses (Rose was the name to which Josephine answered before Napoleon "renamed" her.)

And there were French sheep there as well. 

 

Today (Sunday), we drove from Versaille to La Giraudiere via back roads, avoiding the motorway. We visited Vendome, Lavardin, and St. Arno. We were so excited to get here and to see Reginald and Teresa. 

(This is a not-very-good photo taken from our bedroom window.)