The flight from London to L.A.

Couldn’t help myself – it was a clear day and the view was amazing, so here’s a few pics from seat 43K at 36,000 feet up

Greenland

A closer look at icebergs

Canadian agriculture

A miniscule section of the L.A sprawl

Piccadilly Circus

With a mere 24 hours in London, we only had time to drop our bags at the hotel, find a bus to get to the tube so we could get to Piccadilly Circus to meet up with Amber for a few hours. We had a great time – we managed to score an outside pub table for 3, right amongst the action, so we supped our beers and ate dinner while watching the crazy world and Catherine Tate go by (she’s starring in a Shakespeare play on Charing Cross Rd at the moment).

Saturday evening crowds in Piccadilly Circus	Mind the gap	Newest store on Leicester Square… 4 floors selling M+Ms
Di and Amber	This was about the 5th Hen Party that went past us	Latest London fashions

Bluebles

Another collection of things we’ve seen along the way …..

Nantes

We had a 2 night stay in the busy port city of Nantes before heading back to Heathrow.  Nantes is built over the Loire river but we were surprised that the riverside areas are rather unattractive.  It would have been a tiring walk around the city, so we opted for the mini tourist train to see some of the sights, but that meant few photographs because it was too difficult at speed and over cobbled streets.

Central shopping area	Spotted from our train ride – it’s a huge people carrier
The best shot of the river we could find, and even that’s not impressive	Cafe city

Fontevraud Abbey

Linz and I visited the Abbey in 1999 and loved it, but my photos weren’t digital then.  We visited the town of Fontevraud again last year but didn’t go through the Abbey because we didn’t have time.  As it houses the Plantagenet tombs, it is an important part of Linz’s teaching so we took the time to go through it again and enjoyed it once more.  For those of you who are wondering, the answer is no, I haven’t taken my new camera out of the box yet, so there’s a good excuse to have to come back and photograph the Abbey all over again next year!

Abbey entrance & tomb area	Eleanor of Aquitaine and hubby Henry II	The fantastic kitchen building
		Richard The Lionheart, son of Eleanor & Henry

Livin’ It Up On The Loire

Bits ‘n pieces from our 5 days in a much loved area of the Loire Valley.  We had a great time, and leaving this time was quite emotional for both of us.

Typical houses in town in Saumur

With our heads down and our …

Top end of Saumur city

Linz would not let me buy this house

A favourite building in Montsoreau

Chenonceau – it was on the Bucket List

This is a highly visited romantic fairy tale chateau and as such was humming with tourists.  In fact it was way too busy and it took some of the enjoyment away from the experience.  Added to that, a large chunk was surrounded with scaffolding, which has apparently been there for over a year.  Oh well, it was still amazing and we still enjoyed exploring it.

The entrance		The Fairy Tale View
	Shame about the scaffolding	Yes, every man and his dog was there

Brézé

We didn’t know this place existed until a fellow guest talked about it.  Brézé is a chateau that was built underground and has the largest dry moat in France where it housed a whole army with horses for years in its system of tunnels. In the 16th century, another chateau was built right on top of it and they co-exist today.  Wine was produced in the underground chambers until 1985.  The weather was overcast and rainy, so it was a good choice of sights for the day.

The Pigeonnaire - it housed 3700 pigeons – 2 for every hectare of land owned	Inside the Pigeonnaire – the birds were kept inside while crops were harvested	Costume in the Breze overground chateau – elegance from a previous era
Brézé’s dry moat – it’s hard to appreciate how deep it is	Brézé Chateau tower ceiling	Brézé below ground
Full wine barrels in Brézé caves	Solid brass swan taps in the servants’ bathroom