Surprise Surprise

Have you ever slept in a castle before?

We can't wait to tell you what it's like.

It all started like this...

Jen and Maia, good friends of ours, couldn't come visit this week, as they had planned.  So, my mom and dad set up a one-day roadtrip. They rented a little car and they didn't tell us where we were going.

For 2 1/2 hours the road was windier than Frances's hair in the morning!

Frances says, "I almost died."

The plastic bag was there just in case.

We drove through many towns. My parents told us to search for hotels with restaurants. We found a lot of 2-star hotels but we never stopped. My dad finally pulled over at his favorite place in every town, The Office of Tourism. We stayed in the car and he said he asked the lady in the office for a map. 

We drove a little more until my spotted a castle with a huge natural boulder coming out of one side.  She said, "Woah, check out that castle!" My dad turned into the driveway, saying, "Let's just go check it out."

Check out the video to see the surprise unfold:

Inside this castle, it was so cold. The second we stepped onto the time-polished cobblestones, we felt the dampness and the darkness and smelled the old must that people experienced hundreds of years ago.

Our castle was built in 1492. It was a "love castle." That means, it was the marriage gift from a woman to a man.  They really loved each other but most of the time, back then, marriages were arranged and the people didn't love each other. 

The lady at the front desk showed us to our room. As I walked in and saw the canopy over the bed and the wall of windows and the two chairs we called thrones, I felt I needed to be very lady-like, propper and dressed in a skirt.

This is Frances and my mom taking a bath in the tower!!!! Look for the little window that they used to use to shoot arrows from the tower.

We played Lord and Lady and Traders. My dad was Lord and we all took turns being traders. I came in as an old man trading a cloak for a packed cup of diamonds.  I got what I wanted.

While Lord Hamilton stayed in his chamber watching the ancient game of golf on his from-the-future device, Lady Eleanore, Lady Frances and Lady Carolyn dressed up and went to read and eat appetizers by the fire.

The appetizers looked good but they were a bit odd, like the meat tray--it was proscuitto wrapped around bread sticks and dunked in a creamy white cheesy spread that Frances said stunk like "dirty socks."

Our book was called, Catherine Called Birdy about a girl who lived in Medieval times in a manor that probably was the size of this castle.  She ate crazy stuff too, like eel pie and swan neck pudding.

This is me in my large throne in the appetizer room.

My mom had a surprise too: Frances and my dad got Frances some new fancy slippers for the holiday (and she didn't even KNOW she was going to a CASTLE). My mom was very surprised when she heard the clink-clink on the stone floors. Frances says, "I've never had a high heel before! I felt like I was a real little lady!"

Frances loves Orangina bottles...maybe even more than the Orangina! She is using her pinky with this Orangina bottle to show how ladylike she really is.

To go from our chamber to the dining hall, we had to pass this little church inside the castle.  We know from our book that religion was HUGE back then. Everyone's birthday corresponded with a saint's day.  As our author says, no one back then in the middle ages really thought about time. Most people didn't even know what year it was. Or how old they were. What they did know about the future was heaven. And they hoped they would get there.

This is us on our way to dinner.

The dining room was amazing.  There were about 12 tables and at the end of the dining hall there was a huge fire place.  My mom loved the walls. She'll tell you why. "I was saying to Jeff how beautiful and strong the wallpaper was; and when I leaned back to touch it, I realized it was paint. The entire room was painted, or stenciled, in strong beautiful designs and colors. Wow. The paint was cracking so I know it was old."

You can see the paint behind Frances.

My mom's second course. She told the hostess that she was a vegetarian so the chef made special dishes just for her.  She was just gaping at her food and didn't want to eat it because she wanted to keep it beautiful. 

My dad's first course. I'm not even going to tell you what it was.

Dinner was very fancy.  The table was beautifully decorated with a white table cloth, flowers and little marbles.  The waiter described every dish as she put down in front of us...in french, of course...which made us know they really cared about their food.  

Even the napkins were folded with care. I memorized the way they folded it so I could do it at home. 

On the stairs up to our chamber was beautiful red carpet. This was Frances's favorite thing. Every time I walked up it, I felt the worn out grooves in the rock below it. This sent me back in time. I pictured being in the Mideival times, living in a castle. But girls who lived in castles or manors back then didn't get what people think princesses always get.  Catherine in our book was always stuck weaving, sewing, embroidering and having lady-lessons to be ready for the man she was FORCED to marry. She really wanted to not marry at all, and wanted to be a villager instead whom she saw marrying who they wished, romping around in the sun, spitting and embroidering a lot less.

Back in our room, Frances got a bit scared of the oldness of the castle.  She tucked her feet under her so they wouldn't get eaten by the monsters.  My dad killed about 8 beetles. The wooden floorboards creaked. And the beds in Frances and my chamber were old and cracked and the room was dimly lit.  At least we had lights. Catherine only had candles to light up her whole manor. Frances and I planned to sleep together that night because, I have to admit, I was a bit scared as well.  I was kind of creeped out about the fact people had died in my room and babies were born in my room. In fact we're sure of that: our chamber used to be the mother's chamber. She gave birth to five daughters.

No bad dreams, thankfully.

Breakfast was so french: yogurt, a thin piece of pound cake, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, jam, honey, bee pollen!, and a basket of pastries that we passed politely around the table.

While Daddy packed the car, we read some more on our kindle. My mom says, "It's so incredibly powerful to read a book whose setting is precisely where you find yourself settled at that moment. It's what I loved best about the castle, frankly."

Through this eency door, into the room that is now for storing napkins, is the old bedroom of a child who lived hundreds of years ago. On the ceiling, there are women's faces painted in great detail. These women are this child's important women-relatives. One of them is the child herself, painted as an adult.  Sadly, she never made it to the age her portrait showed her as. She died as a child.

In the story we read about the paintings, the most lovely portrait was the child, Marthe.  We all agreed that this must be Marthe, for it was the prettiest we saw. 

We left that morning to go on a hike in the national park surrounding the castle.

We'll always remember spending a night in this castle. 

Below are a few pictures of the hike.

Jeff and Frances doing the backstroke while walking forward. Eleanore and I decided we could NOT do that!

"Eleanore noticed these rock formations. She saw immigrant women, the kind who are leaving Russian villages. This one has a sack on her back and a child in front of her. Amazing. There was an entire horizon of displaced people. Even in Catherine's time, in the 1200s, Jews were being thrown out of their homes and villages. King Edward, a beloved king back then, threw the Jews out of England."

Jeff says, "I love curvy roads.  Especially when they're carved into overhanging rock.  The national park would be a great place for a one-week hiking vacation. There are about 50 great three-hour hikes up in the mountains or along the river or in the deep canyons. It's like a low altitude mini Yosemite"

Bye!