Au revoir, chateau and Rully

Parting is such sweet sorrow, the Bard said. He must have had to check out of our chateau.

Before The Mister and I left, we took a walk around the grounds. We even ventured away from the terrace -- which is more my style, more so than woods and stuff ---

... and ambled through the paths in the woods. I was so brave!

Did I ever show you the photo from April (below) of our granddaughter Felicity at a kids' play place where she loved having a little house all to herself?

We saw two little houses (below) on the chateau's estate that would be ideal for Felicity.  She could decorate them and make them darling! (Gram, of course, would live in the chateau.)

Before we leave the chateau, I want to show you photos (below) of the chapel, right on the grounds, just inside the gate across the courtyard from the doors to the chateau. (If we were having coffee at Panera Bread, you would look at these pictures just to be polite.) The lady who built the chateau with her husband wanted a chapel of her own even though there was a town church a stone's throw away, just over the wall (as you can see in photo 2).

The couple was childless and the husband died first. They had agreed to leave everything to her husband's nephew, but the wife pulled a switcheroo and left the chateau and the estate to the Catholic church. The nephew got their main residence in another city.

The day we were packing to leave the chateau, we experienced the first daytime rain of our Grand Tour-- and we've been on this holiday for OVER FIVE WEEKS!  Do you believe the luck! And even the rain was fun to watch from our big windows. We stayed put until it eased up.

When it was just a drizzle, we took a walk through the town of Rully, right next to the chateau. This is the little village we watch like it's a Lego town below one of our windows.

Amy and Melissa, because of this first rainfall, I finally got to use the pretty umbrella you gave me!

The rain abated and here are other photos we took as we walked through Rully. What a charming little village.

And all too soon, you're out of town and into -- where else? - vineyards!

If you walk a bit farther, there's the medieval castle of Rully.

So on Friday morning, we hugged the chateau owners goodbye, checked out, and drove through the gates for the last time.

"Do you think we can ever come back?" I asked The Mister as we drove away. "Whenever you want to" was his perfect answer.

But an hour later, after we had breakfast in some small French town, I came out of the restroom. ("Toilette" as they say.) "How understanding are you?" Earl asked.

"Totally!" I said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the security key for our chateau room. He had forgotten to turn it in. "I really think we need to drive this back to Mark," he said. I agreed.

So a while later we drove into the gate and came through the front door. "We're baaaaack," I said to Mark and Mehta.

And hopefully we'll be back another time.

Here's something funny I want to share: Earl wanted to take a photo of me walking in the woods. I guess he doesn't have any of those. So he snapped about 12 photos, hoping to get one I liked. Later when I looked at them, every single photo has one of those hanger-holder straps from my shirt showing! (See by my collarbone? below.) How could he not notice! Gotta love The Mister! Cracks me up.

Thanks for reading my blog.
Jane