Château de Chambord, a medieval castle in the middle of France!

Hey you all! here I am again!

Currently I am home, recovering from the back hernia I got as a souvenir from Malaga!
The doctors in the hospital recommended me to end my van trip and fly back home! So I did!
They also advised me to get surgery! But my insurance already told me that I wont get an operation in the Netherlands! Here the doctors don't operate that quickly any more!

Wen I got home I have been to the doctors office for a checkup! I am free of pain at the moment but I still have loss of feeling in my big toe and on top of my foot and loss of strength in my right leg!
I now have physiotherapy and Mensendieck therapy, and hopefully that will help me to get better!

My van is (hopefully) currently on it's way to the Netherlands! It's going on transport on a big truck together with other car's who have been stranded in Spain! I could take a week to fill up a truck and than it takes another week to get back here, 2500 km away!

So that was a little update of how my trip trough Spain ended! I wrote a little story about it here on hive if you want to read that! You scroll back a bit and you see me in the hospital!
But for now I am starting to post the many pictures I took the weeks before all that!

I wanted to drive as quickly as possible trough France so I could start out my Spain adventure more quickly! And I planed to visit a couple of places in France on my way back! But I could'n resist going to this medieval Château in the middle of France!

I arrived at this castle at 21:30 in the evening! I saw that the castle was completely lit up in many different colors! I first made myself something to eat and after that I went on a night mission to photograph the castle when it was fully lit! But when I was on the way with all my gear, the lights of the castle all went out... that was so not cool! So I went to back to my van!

The morning was nice, I started a sunrise mission in front of the big castle and it's big moat in front of it. It's always nice to try some reflection pictures!

This is a panoramic photo of 6 pictures stitched together!

And I tryed my 14mm lens too, but than the castle is just to far away!
I do like the reflection here!

The bridge to the castle! Also a panoramic shot of 5 vertical pictures stitched together!

As you probably already saw, the towers of the castle are completely wraped up for restoration! Nothing I could do about that so I just took if for granted! I did saw the moon peeking behind the clouds, Luckily I just saw that in time so I could take these pictures!

The end of the golden hour!

After the clouds rolled in I got back to my van for some breakfast! After that I took a strole around the castel and not even 500 meter from the campsite I discovered a wild observation hut! Ofcours I went in there and just waited for an hour or so! I am happy whit my catch that morning! A hog, a bunny and some birds!

The afternoon they predicted a lot of rain! Perfect conditions to spend a day inside the castle! The castle built was finished in 1519 and had to be the top building of the world in those day’s! Many architects and builders were hired to make this place a real utopia of France!
And I can tell you, they really did a good job! For example, they have built 82 staircases in there! One of them is a double spiral staircase in the middle of the building!

It’s just awesome how they did that in those day’s! I love places like this because I can really spent hours and hours photographing it all! So man curves, lines, shadows and lovely light fall! It was just amazing! It is off season wright and still many people are there visiting! I really can imagine how busy it would be here during the holidays!

I often try to include people in my pictures! This way you can see a little better how the big of the building really is!

The view from the roof is also pretty cool, and the details up there are awesome to see! The whole building is a piece of art!

The interior is just like it was in the old day's! I don't like to photograph that because that is more like a registration of something! I love to make my pictures a little more like a piece of art!

But for the stories here I took some interior pictures, just for the idea!

Here a view of a couple of the 84 staircases in there! I just love these kind of architecture! I can spent the whole day here, just photographing stairs and all the lines and shapes!

Here are a view other pictures that I took trough out the castle! I really like the next picture! The guy sitting there all by him self!

You almost can feel his loneliness! Luckily his wife was close by!

This is the trophy corridor! They really love to hunt here!

And in the middle of the double spiral staircase, there is this void! It's light up by a big lamp in the top! I don't really understand why they would have this made like this! Maybe its a firmer construction like this! I cant imagine that it has got something to do with light! Maybe it's some kind of ventilation to! But I loved to see it!
I took to many pictures of it!