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Friday - 21st March 2008 - Good
Friday |
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Well after last nights'
guests arriving back late and being extremely noisy,
thought we'll get our own back this morning. |
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So up nice and early and
thought we'd better load the car, well it was a real
shame that each time we went out to the car, we shut the
room door, well, ok, shut maybe a little gentle and
maybe I should have used the term slam. Shame. Oh and I
noticed a couple of times that someone stuck their head
out of the room next to us, to which I pointed out to
Anne that they were the noisy ones who woke us up last
night. Double shame. |
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Next came breakfast. Now
this is a real delight as they served bacon and egg,
along with the normal continental breakfast bits and as
we'd packed, thought we'd get an early(ish) start and so
off to the breakfast area for 8:30. Well as they don't
normally start doing breakfast until 9 and it looked
busy (ie a full house) I just had to retrieve something
from the kitchen fridge, and guess what, they were in a
preparing breakfast. Well, it would have been rude to
keep them waiting, so we had an early scoff and then
paid for the stay and escaped with 3 bottles of the best
red and 9 bottles of the unlabelled white. I was working
on the assumption that 2 bottles of the white may bite
the dust this evening and so I'd only have to stash 10
bottles in the luggage. Well that was the plan. |
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To be
honest, the drive up to Chinon was ok, well there was
one patch where the motorway had been shut (nice of them
to do that), so a bit of quick re-routing on TomTom and
off we went. |
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Found Chinon without any
problems and arrived at 17:30, having set off from
Abalos at 9:30, so basically took us 8 hours to get
there. Obviously we had a couple of stops and worked on
doing about 2,5 hours each and then swap over and find
the occasional place to scoff. |
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The hotel was hidden in
the top right of a small square, but lovely place,
though an archway and round the back to the garage
marked for the hotel. Anne was game for a laugh and
hopped out as I was driving and managed to convince them
to open the garage door, where we reversed in and parked
up. Space for about 8 or so cars. |
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Lovely hotel, very odd and
unique as it's an a rather old building that has been
converted to a hotel so not all the floors are on the
same level and there are little courtyards. |
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They had given us an ok
sort of room overlooking the front on the second floor.
So I popped down to have a look at upgrading the room
and she showed me 2 other rooms, where yes, they were
nicer, they had no view. So thanked her and put up with
ours. The advantage being that it overlooked the square
and the local castle. |
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Anne was having fun
watching the local cat being very kitten-like around the
square and climbing the trees, especially when a dog
appeared. |
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As we'd been there for a
good 10 mins, started to get itchy feet and so popped
out, well, to be honest we only got to across the road
as there was a wine shop that also did tastings... put
us down for that. |
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Found out that there was
something like 160 vineyards in the area and whereas
they are mainly reds, he was able to bring out a lovely
white. Conclusion being that we spent an hour in the
shop, having a good natter, discussing wines and came
away with a couple of bottles (after drinking at least
one while there). |
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Evening meal was at the
hotel, turns out to the run by the in-laws of the wine
shop owner. Good meal and worth trying. There was a bit
of fun as Anne wanted me to pop out to the car and get a
bottle of cheapy white and put in the chiller in the
room (windowsill), but someone had lost the car key.
Luckily Anne was on hand and managed to find it. |
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