France Trip Day 4: Getting settled in Blois

We left the Guédelon Castle yesterday afternoon and arrived in Blois in time for dinner. I laughed when I read that my guidebook said, "To pronounce the French city Blois, say 'Blah.'" Now, there's a huge difference between saying, "Blah" and saying "Blwah," which is how you should say it. Because, really, Blois is hardly blah at all. We're looking forward to seeing some beautiful châteaux here. I am a little surprised, though, that I woke up in the same hotel room this morning that we checked into last night.

The hotel was cheap, but when we first walked into our rooms, I thought David (and possibly the kids) were going to demand that we find somewhere else to stay. Let's just say that the rooms were not luxurious. In fact, the entire building looked like it was brought in on a truck and glued together. But our rooms had beds, bathrooms and TVs. What more did we need?

The bathrooms seemed to be pods that were just glued into place and the shower got it's water from the sink faucet. This morning, James announced, "I feel like I just took a shower in an airplane bathroom!" and David said, "You know, this reminds me of camping." That's a pretty good assessment. Just wish I had taken a photo.





As we were getting ready for breakfast, we put on the TV and watched Dora l'Exploratrice, who has a beautiful French voice and teaches kids English, just like she does in Germany.








And then Spongebob came one. Watching Spongebob in foreign languages is a very interesting experience, in particular making note of the characters' names. We have seen Spongebob in English, German, Italian and now French. Usually, the characters' names stay exactly the same as their English ones, or are pretty close. In France, Spongebob is Bob l'éponge (Bob the Sponge) and Mr. Krabs is Capitaine Krabs.




Squidward is another story. In Italy, he is Squidward, but in Germany, he's Thaddäus and in France he's Carlo. Taking into account his personality, you could no doubt do some very interesting cultural research into why that is.

After watching some cartoons, it was time for breakfast (the hotel redeemed itself by offering a reasonably priced and delicious breakfast buffet) and off to see some castles.