Château hunting.

Xavier and I went château hunting today. It is much easier than it sounds when your starting position is somewhere in the Loire Valley in France. There are châteaux hidden all over the place. Down this road, we saw some telltale signs:


The first dead give away. The sign read: "Château" (You know, CHau is short for château in French road sign speak).


Traps. Do not enter. Private Property. (Note to self: never put up a sign that says, "traps" to keep people out. It was a direct invitation. Who would not want to know what sort of traps the owners of this modern day château had devised to keep people out? "We have to go," I said and Xavier pulled over to park the car.)


Through the trees, we spied it and it was a big one. Xavier corrected me when I whispered this - almost spitting on him with excitement, saying, "It is actually a relatively small one." Killjoy. Cynic. Frenchman.


So we took this path. The most apparent trap was spiderwebs - everywhere, with large arachnids. Then, my feet started to itch in my sandals and I was convinced they had implanted the trail with poison ivy. (I'm less convinced now).


We made it through those traps and then there was the château, in front of us. We continued furtively, thinking from that point it would be smooth sailing, but alas, first we had to make it over the spikes in the ground. (This was a real trap - for the tires of cars who tried to venture onto the property). Nice.


I expected a concealed pitfall at some point with some sort of wild animal at the bottom, but we never fell into it.






Surprisingly, Xavier was more intimidated by the traps than I thought he would be. I was almost climbing on the château itself while Xavier stood there with a furrowed brow, a bit distressed about our situation. He encouraged us to get going.