The penultimate leg of our prolonged foray to Europe: France! We’ve already hit mainland Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta (trip overview, including legs, is here).
We flew from Malta to Paris to bike through Normandy with Thomas and Lisa, but left a day early to guard against any flight issues or other delays that might impact our connecting with them when they arrived from Atlanta the next morning. Rather than stay in Paris, which we had visited three times and which, frankly, we didn’t particularly like, we headed about 30 miles north to the Chateau de Chantilly and its little town.
We checked in to our hotel a short walk away from the chateau, headed down the street for some lunch, then headed to the chateau itself.
The chateau largely dates from the 19th century, when the Duke of Aumale rebuilt the structure on the foundations of a medieval fortress.
The chateau’s formal gardens were designed by the same landscape architect credited with designing the grounds of Versailles.
Pretty cool rival to the chateaus we visited during our bike trip through the Loire Valley back in 2015, but they offered a deeper history than Chantilly.
The chateau’s chapel, right inside the gate:
Barrel-vaulted, highly decorated ceiling above the grand staircase:
Mosaic above the fireplace in the Salle des Gardes depicting the Rape of Europa by Jupiter:
But it’s not just a 19th-century French mosaic, it’s a Roman mosaic dating to the 1st century AD recovered from around Herculaneum, where we wandered just a month or so ago on this trip. Freakin’ crazy to have this just mounted here.
Libery:
The Rotunda of the Musée Condé at Château de Chantilly, created by the Duke of Aumale to display his art collection, with Henri Chapu’s marble Joan of Arc at Domrémy beneath Paul Baudry’s ceiling painting of the Abduction of Psyche
Just your normal decorative French fire screen; nothing to see here. . .
Heading to the stables. . .
Just as grand as the chateau itself.
Stables: huge. Horses therein: not so much.
Old-school carriages:
Just a pretty cool suspension and paint job.
Stage coach driver uniform:
His boots were not worn, but instead affixed directly to his saddle.
We spent the night at a nice Relais & Chateau hotel next to Chateau de Chantilly, then woke up the next morning to meet Thomas and Lisa upon their disembarkation in CDG from their redeye from ATL. But WolfeStreetTravel’s Chief Adventure Officer, who’s in charge of the entire itinerary, mistook their takeoff time (at around 6:30 PM) for their landing time (at around 9:00 AM) and so we left the hotel WAY too early, missed a nice breakfast, and ended up trying to sleep a little more in the lobby of one of the airport hotels at CDG while we waited for Thomas and Lisa. One more screw up, but luckily a minor one (although the WolfeStreetTravel Navigator was pretty annoyed that she lost sleep over this, literally).
Next: Bayeux and biking!
