Chateau d’Ecouen

Sunday, 21-Apr-2013

This is the imposing front of the Chateau.

Today we went to three separate places, the first was the Musee Nationale de la Renaissance in the Chateau d’Ecouen. It was only about 45 min north of Paris, so, a short ride compared to what we have done the last cole days. This is a typical French chateau that you might see in any French tourist book or if you are watching Le Tour. There is no lake around it but there is a large walled trench that would make a good defense. Of course, no one lives there now but it has some really nice things on display including, need I say, clocks.

Here is an engraved block plane. Makes you wonder if they ever used these – I kind of doubt it.

In addition to the clocks and more carriage watches, like we saw yesterday, there was some amazing tapestries, some really neat engraved tools, and a gold ship that had a clock on it but that was a minor part. It was designed to move on hidden wheels and had lots of moving parts.

There are no pictures that can adequately represent this ship. It is about three feet tall. It is so big that I had to use the panorama function on the iphone to get it all in.

The tapestries were all about the story of David and Bathsheba although I would not have been able to tell had it not been explained. There are 10 tapestries in the set, only five of them filled up this huge hall and they were in absolutely immaculate condition.

Sorry this picture is dark. They keep these rooms quite dark to help,preserve the tapestries. The colors are still very good.

After a couple hours we had a nice prepared lunch in the chateau restaurant. Not quite the same multi-course meal we have been eating for lunch but quite nice. There was a very tasty cuscus along with two kids of cheese, three different types of meat including pastrami and prosciutto. We had a cider champagne and red wine to go with it. I had a lemon tart/meringue pie for dessert which was to great. The espresso was good though.

Nice lunch. The cuscus was surprisingly tasty.

Back on the bus and we were off to the Louvre.