Okay, let’s get it out there right away: I wasn’t a fan of the Christmas decor at Cheverny. A lot of it looked so … tacky. For example, why are these random heaps scattered about on the lawn?
The château itself is a beauty:
The interior has an incredible amount of detailed painting on the walls and the ceilings:
I actually liked that, and I’ll show you more below. But I have the feeling the Christmas designers took the idea of extreme ornamentation and kept asking themselves, “Can we squeeze something else in here? Yes? Let’s do it! And maybe a little more? Yes!”
M liked that each room had a theme. However, he didn’t appreciate the crowds. He couldn’t stay and fully take in the rooms because there was a long line breathing down our necks. Instead, he took lots of pictures and has spent time this morning saying, “Hey, did you see that xxx in this room was actually dressed-up dogs (or cats, or bears…)?” To which I generally replied, “Umm, no, I pretty much stopped looking…”
It wasn’t all bad. Occasionally you could get a view of the regular decor … usually by looking up. Obviously, this is incredibly extravagant, but somehow didn’t rub me the wrong way like the Christmas decorations. Maybe because it was done years ago, when it was de rigueur for the nobility, and nowadays I expect the French to be more tasteful! (As I came out of the château, I thought, “This is what happens when people watch too much American TV, and I don’t like it!”)
I thought the bears were pretty cute – and the creators managed to refrain from putting bears on every single surface:
And then there were the Lego creations – the château, a fortress, and, something we’d never seen before, recreations of paintings:
Outside, the giant flowers and the giant ornaments on the lawn were fun.
We finished off our visit with a one-hour performance (loosely) based on the opera The Barber of Seville. It was in the Trophy room, which they couldn’t completely fill with Christmas decorations because they had to leave room for seats…
The dialogue and singing were all in French, which I mostly understood and M not so much. (They were talking very fast…) Fortunately, we’ve seen the opera several times so the basic plot was familiar. The five performers did a great job!
Beyond Our French Adventure 