The magic museum, Maison de la Magie at Blois, doubles up as the town’s cuckcoo clock.

On the hour dragons (sorry, salamanders) emerge from its windows and do a little dance. The half hour is marked by a soloist.

A bit like an upmarket Las Vegas hotel.

This posted via mobile via Flickr. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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Clos Luce at Amboise is no ordinary French chateau. It’s the house in which Leonardo Da Vinci spent the last three years of his life and when you’ve finished touring the chateau, you discover the grounds are nothing less than a theme park for grown ups.

Katharine and I were so over stimulated we found ourselves in the childrens’ play area bouncing around on the see-saw.

The garden’s packed with full scale working models of Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions, like this recently fired machine gun. Other military highlights include the spinning tank and I’ll soon be uploading video of yours truly operating the paddle boat to YouTube.
Update 2 September:
Here’s me operating Leonardo Da Vinci’s Paddle Boat at Chateau Clos Luce, Amboise.

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The French don’t seem to do ice cream. Or frozen deserts in general.

French ice cream is a particularly artificial construction, notable for its weird colouring and unfortunate after taste.

The problem appears to be the dominance of Carte D’Or, which not only monopolises the cornet market, but frozen deserts in everyday restaurants. Desert menus are like those you find in Indian restaurants back in the UK. Photos of sundae type things and sorbets, the most famous of which is the scooped out half orange filled with sorbet and laid down at the bottom of the freezer for several years.

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Just nine or ten gardeners (depending on who you talk to) tend the magnificent gardens at Villandry, France. And given the formality and variety of gardens that’s a hefty workload.

So maybe someone had been lax with regard to the flowers in the Chateau…

A burly attendant bursts into the room and barks at a very proper English lady — let’s call her Mrs Terribly Terribly — who’s not only touching the flowers, but manipulating them. Does she desist? Does she hell!

‘It’s okay!’ she insists. ‘I’m a flower arranger. I spotted a gap.’