Saying GoodBye to NYC!

Well I'm giving up my apartment in NYC. Should I come back? Anybody have connections in Morocco?

Big Happenings in a Small Town

Today is the big day. Each summer, every village has its vide grenier, or local flea market and everybody has a booth and sells their old crap. Mostly junk, but you occasionally find cool old stuff. Vide=empty, Grenier=attic.

Also we are celebrating Le Prix Napoleon, a bike race, and having fireworks later. It's really almost too much excitement for me to handle. Above is the village square, full of tourists and the locals manning their tables.

Below is a temporary addition to the town square.

And for a little added fun a French version of a marching band, walking around town playing Dixieland-style jazz tunes.

Castle Shelving

Here's some pix of random shelving and niches at the castle:

(below, a salt cellar-or at least we think so, a place near the fire to keep the salt dry)

and this looks like a medicine cabinet but was built long before indoor plumbing, and it's large enough to hide a baby:

Back in Saint-Pierre de Maillé

...and only going to the chateau on Saturdays to change over between guests. But look how pretty it is here, around sunset at 9:30pm. It's a weirdly cloudy sky because it's supposed to rain tomorrow. This was taken right outside the front door (towards the end you see the courtyard, we are just on the right).

The Cave and Tunnels in the Chateau

Back in the day, you had to have an escape tunnel in your castle. And we have ours. Someone walled up the escape but one of the tunnels does lead out the back way to the secret garden. Have a look:

Here's the entrance from one of the bedrooms on the lowest level. It's a few steps down into the cave, or cellar. (A cave is also where a winemaker stores his wine to age.) Apologies for the spacing. Not loving blogspot today, or vice versa.

This is the oldest part of the chateau and dates from about the 11th century and so the roof is a crude Norman-style architecture:

Here's the tunnel that leads out 

and then the other end. 

There's another wall but it's blocked off, you can kinda see it in the first picture. This is probably where the tunnel led to escape UNDER the river about a half mile off...

Going Away Party

Big last night as a send-off for Joyce and Lili & Nina. Lili made this terrific and beautiful "serve-yourself" salad but it was so pretty everybody was afraid to help themselves.

Joyce is off to India and Bali to work on Bali Children's Project. Just got it set up in "Causes" on Facebook and linked to their non-profit. Please join this cause as I'll be working on it and spreading the word.

Moulin de Cheni

This is where we stayed when we went south to the Limousin. Here's a view of the estate from across the lake. There were 3 lakes, 1 main house (like a hunting lodge), a caretaker's cottage and 1 long building which was like 3 little apartments.

Here's a closeup of the big house...

I stayed in the middle gite, or cabin, in the building of three cabins. Here's the back of that house

and a closeup of the little stairs (I love the fern).

This was the view from my bedroom:

And finally here's a view of the lake from the front door...