A Busman's Holiday

The servants dining hall in the basement kitchens nearly always has the best floral decorations.

Christmas Day is usually a bit dull. There's nothing worth watching on the telly, nothing to do because everything is closed or the weather is terrible and apart from a special meal it's all a bit pointless.

Simon was the only person in this room when he took the photo.

This year Simon decided that we would go out for Christmas Day.  We mentioned it to friends Niall and Antoinette and they thought it was a great idea. They are in the same situation as us -- no little kids to focus the event on, but you are supposed to treat the day as special and fun nonetheless.

The main Christmas tree, in the long gallery, a confection in sparkly white and gold.

In fact, not everything in France shuts down for Christmas. A couple of chateaux are open and the trains run. We decided to go to Chenonceau for the afternoon.

Christmas Day was an unexpected and welcome break in the dreary weather we have been having.

I know. You would think we've been there enough during the year. But actually, it allowed us to see rooms and parts of the grounds we don't normally go to, and without the crowds.

When we arrived there were 4 buses in the carpark and maybe 50-80 cars. This was a bit more than I expected, but not too bad. We had many rooms entirely to ourselves in the house. The decorations are outstanding, especially when you consider the expense they go to compared to how many people actually see them. For an overview of the interior, see this video from the local newspaper.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the day and will definitely do it again next year. It's up to Simon to come up with an equally brilliant suggestion for where we should go. He's the ideas man.

On the way home we stopped at Sublaine to watch the ISS go over. We thought about the international team spending Christmas way up there and waved.

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Au jardin hier: After a wild storm at 4 am yesterday there are branches down everywhere in the orchard. The biggest are from the large nectarine by the potager gate and the big purple gage plum. I started clearing them up but after an hour it started to rain so I've still got some to break up and put aside for kindling. I guess I'll have to cut the torn bases of these lost branches on the trees off neatly too.

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A la cuisine hier: Mushroom soup from the freezer, the last of the foie gras, sausages, cheesey potatoes, buttered spinach, cherry plum clafoutis from the freezer.