Ever since I wrote about the house keys and the challenges of various locks and keys on this trip, I have been humming Green Door. Sorry to have imposed this. But now I have to talk about what WAS behind our particular green door.
When we travel Ken finds us the most amazing places to stay. Keep in mind that amazing is not always a total positive. But almost always our accommodations are positive, and some are jaw-dropping. He goes in search of places that make him go “Hmmmm”. His searches have led us to an amazing hilltop house in Tuscany with gardens and streams (complete with tomatoes and the threat of venomous snakes and scorpions) and a terrifying assent on a single track road. It took us to an equally amazing but totally different medieval house in Les Arcs, Provence with coats of arms, suits of armour, and corkscrew staircases which we didn’t climb at night in the dark. His search gave us a week in Tourette sur Loup in an amazing house with a rooftop terrace. It also gave us a roof top terrace in Rome which you had to risk life and limb to get to, climbing through the bedroom window, but oh my the view of Rome was breathtaking. The staircase to the second floor bedroom was so narrow with no railings to cling to, we left our suitcases in the living room, all eight foot square of it, including the dinner table and kitchen. But it was Rome after all.
This trip he found us several places. One of which was the Manoir Belvedere, in Auray, France. We’d never heard of Auray before he found this house, but the house set the destination, and off we went.
And we found the green door behind the 28 bis address. Bis by the way I have learned since writing about keys, means “oops, there’s two of us”. So 28 bis is beside 28. In North America we’d say 28 and 28A or some such thing.
Anyway. The green door beckoned. And what a treasure we found behind that door.
Our host gave us a tour of the upper gardens and we spent a delightful couple of hours with him and his daughter hearing about the history of the house. We had arrived in his garden with chocolates for our host, but no pen and paper, not expecting to hear such delightful history telling. So my facts may be wrong, but if they are, they are in the neighbourhood of right.
Back in about 1220 or 1230, a castle was built in Auray. By the early to mid 1500s, it was either destroyed or in ruins, I don’t know which. The house in which our palatial quarters were located, was built in and around that time using some of the stones from the dismantled castle. A tree in his garden, an arborist told him, had been planted about the time the castle was being built, so it was in the vicinity of 800 years old. He explained to us that no rules existed about treatment or protection of these venerable trees, but he and his family were doing their best to treat it with the respect and care it deserved.
In another part of his garden stood a magnificent magnolia. Our first home could have fit nicely under its sheltering branches. What a thing of beauty. I think it was Joyce Kilmer who wrote “I think that I shall never see a thing a lovely as a tree.” Apologies for misquoting. I have no internet right now so i can’t check the quote. Our host said that in the 28 years he had lived in the house, the tree had always been blooming. Not always in full bloom, but blooms here and there.
His view over the valley was breathtaking. Beside him was a convent where retired Nuns from a variety of orders lived. And below him the town ramparts.
The house has three floors. Our apartment, and I use the word only because I can’t think of an appropriate alternative, was the second floor. Our host owned at least the floor our apartment was on, plus the one above us where he and his family lived, when he wasn’t somewhere else. I don’t know if he owned the ground floor, where businesses were located.
So now to our home for a bit more than a week. It was huge. Of course there were stairs. Everywhere we stayed this trip, we had to climb stairs. This time we only had 24. Hardly any at all in the overall scheme of things. So you climb the stairs, and come to a lovely garden. Through a doorway into a 10 or 15 foot hallway, out the other side to a stone-wall-enclosed sun-drenched terrace, where we had breakfast every day. Through the doorway (if you could make the keys work, she said referring back to the key story) into a large foyer.
Walls of course are almost six feet thick. To the right is a big dining room and off the dining room is a huge bedroom with an ensuite. Big enough to have an alcove holding a twin bed in case you need to change beds in the middle of the night. It was at least 20 feet square. Back to the foyer take a couple of steps and you are at another bedroom, equally large, but the bathroom is across the foyer and up five or six steps. A few steps past this bedroom and you come to a large living room, comfortably furnished with sofas, chairs, tables, tv, fireplace.
To the left of that room was the kitchen and beyond that another bedroom this one containing a big round table as well as a piano, and tucked into the corner was a room in a tower/turret shape, filled with books.
High ceilings, crown molding, beautiful art. Some of the walls of the house were part of the town walls, some of the walls around the garden were original castle walls. You can see why I struggle with the word “apartment”.
The place was stunning. Elegant. Comfortable. We had such a lovely week there. The beauty of the house was enhanced by the street it sat on. Across from us was a gallery with changing artists displaying and selling their wares. Up and down the hill….of course the house sat on a steep hillside so when we weren’t climbing stairs we were climbing hills …. Were various independent little stores with local artisans’ works. Three ice cream shops. Of course. And at the bottom of the hill was the river and more ice cream shops.
The hills and the stairs made visits to the ice cream shops less …. ummmm….consequential.
Ken delivers amazing accommodations. Again. Yay Ken.
Spare bedroom, piano is behind the chair on the left.
The dining room.
and the living room.