2017 France: Chartres, Amboise, Beaune, Paris: A couple of stops before Paris

Day 10: Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte and Paris

(This post is mostly pictures. And I'm not a historian, so please forgive any incorrect descriptions/facts.)

We cleaned up our apartment and got on the road by 9am because our destination was Paris. We really enjoyed our time in Beaune. It's a place we'd definitely visit again and we'd stay in the same air b&b.

After stopping at a rest stop to buy another map and sandwiches, we routed ourselves to Fontainebleau and arrived with no problem to park in a pay lot near the castle.

First impression of Fontainebleau was "wow! It's huge and beautiful." I snapped a (pretty terrible; can't crop) picture of two cute little ballerinas before we bought our tickets and started our tour.

Chateau du Fontainebleau was (almost) continuously inhabited from the 12th century until the fall of Napoleon in 1870. It was the home of kings like Francois I, Louis XIV, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, and Napoleon III. They all put their stamps on this chateau by commissioning art, furnishings, decor. It has been preserved in its entirety and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The tour was very comprehensive--we were able to see many rooms in the palace. They were all pretty and elaborate but perhaps not at their best on this gloomy day.

Tiny ballerinas and a huge castle

The tour was very comprehensive. We saw the Great Apartments and the Pope's Apartments.

Anne of Austria's bed chamber, 1660

Antechamber of Anne of Austria

Life of Alexander tapestries woven at Gobelins

Amboise Perret's "Planets" ceiling, 1558

Vestibule of the chapel

The Francois I Gallery and Ballroom have amazing frescoes and stucco work which were produced by Italian artists during the reigns of Francois I and Henry II.

The Francois Gallery, 1528

The royal coat of arms

Francois I's emblem

Restored fresco

The ballroom was finished by Francois' son Henri II

The ballroom

The alcoves for "private" conversations

Musicians would play up here

I'm slightly obsessed with fleur de lis

Intimate alcoves in the ballroom

The royal crest

Future King Louis XIII was born in this salon in 1601.

The Francois I salon was the Queen's chamber. It later was the dining room under Louis XVI and Napoleon I.

The Francois I salon

A tapestry in the Empress' Antechamber

The Diana Gallery was constructed under Henry IV and recounted the story of the goddess Diana. It was redecorated under Napoleon I and Louis XVIII then converted into a library under Napoleon III.

The Diana Gallery

The Diana Gallery became a library during Napoleon I

The Empress's Great Salon

The Empress' Chamber: From Queen Marie de Medici to Empress Eugenie all of the queens of France have occupied this room.

The Empress' Chamber

This was the King's Chamber from the 17th century until the Revolution. It was a state bedroom. Napoleon I kept it as a symbolic place by converting it to a Throne room.

The Throne Room

The Emperor's Chamber was constructed under Louis XVI and was Napoleon's bedchamber.

The Emperor's Chamber

On this little table, Napoleon signed his deed of abdication on April 6, 1814.

The Abdication Room

The Chapel, which was visited also from a balustrade, was the final stop on the tour. Beautiful.

The Chapel

Back outside, we walked around this massive building before heading out.

We enjoyed our visit to Fontainebleau. The history in its rooms, and keeping track of it, was overwhelming. It was here that I bought my "Chronology of the History of France" by Claude Lebedel. America is an infant in comparison...

Next up was Vaux-le-Vicomte, from 1641, which is the largest private estate listed as a Historic Monument in France.

We grabbed a nice lunch in the cafe and then started our tour with the stables and carriages.

Vaux-le-Vicomte was the brainchild of Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, and his "interior decorator," Charles Le Brun. King Louis XIV visited the chateau in August 1661, apparently was jealous of its grandeur and the wealth of its patron so three weeks later decided to have Nicolas Fouquet arrested and imprisoned at the Bastille. The King seized the chateau and lands and used the same artists to build Versailles.

We enjoyed our tour of Vaux-le-Vicomte. The history and the displays were outstanding. It's a beautiful chateau, all the more special because it's in family hands. They are working hard to keep it up--must be an amazingly costly endeavor. I probably liked it more than Fontainebleau.

Next, we set the GPS for Orly airport where we would return our rental car. It took awhile and it didn't seem like there was a direct route to the airport. After a couple of attempts to fill up the car, we delivered it--full of gas--to Hertz and found our way to the taxi stand. About 30 minutes later, we were checking into our air b&b on rue de Bellechasse.

It was large apartment, 62 steps up, very plainly decorated, with a cobbled together bathroom, kind of noisy at night, but ours for 7 nights. Its location was fabulous--a block and a half from the Orsay Museum and the Seine, a block from Solferino metro. Close to everything but not really a "neighborhood" feel. Although we liked it, we won't stay there again.

One of our Paris traditions is having fallafels at L'as du Fallafel. So there we headed. And they were delicious as always! Plus, the people watching was outstanding (those waiters sure are cute :).

We weren't ready to turn in so headed to Au Bougnat on Ile de la Cite, where we'd spent time on our last trip, for nightcaps. Some of the same people were there and we again enjoyed the people watching while we had our drinks.

A slow meander past Notre Dame and a few other beautifully lit up buildings brought us "home."