24th September 2013 - A grand day out at Pierrefonds

I know Pierre means 'Peter' and fond means the base or bottom of something, but that's as much translation of this lovely place that I'm giving!  We had wanted to go there when we were moored at Compiegne, but it was a long cycle ride and the weather was uncertain.  So we did this separately, at the end of our September UK car hire.  We love the town and the castle, even tho' we couldn't see it when we arrived until we turned the corner (following the SatNav faithfully) and suddenly, there it was above us like Laputa:

Actually I don't have the right picture to give the impression we had, as our approach was from the left of this pic, and from low down, so it seemed to float and rise above us.  The weather was so good, so hot, we didn't want to go inside and we could see school parties going in & out so thought we'd come again out of school vacation.  To spin out this lovely day we decided to treat ourselves to lunch, with a view of the chateau of course:

The village has lots of special houses and views, as you can see:

 

That strange person is in the way again, sorry, but the view is still nice.  We did walk up to the chateau entry:

But eventually we had to say goodbye to Pierrefonds (not sure how many bottoms he has), but we'll be back to inspect the inside, on what is bound to be a cooler day tho'