Loire and Le Mans

The start of my two week trip to France and Switzerland was to spend a few days seeing all of the castles of the Loire. The trip doesn't have a catchy name like some of my trips. I'm lazy I guess.

On the drive down, I left early in the morning so that I would have enough time to stop at the Le Mans museum and still make it to the hotel in time for dinner. Just before reaching Paris, the traffic, my traffic service, or both went crazy. Instantly, the reported delays went from zero to nearly 3 hours. That would have meant skipping the museum and still arriving later than desired. So, I replanned and replanned again as the traffic ahead seemed to be appearing and disappearing according to the computer. But, I did make it to Le Mans in time to visit the museum. However, I didn't visit the museum. They were having a minor motorcycle race and the parking was a disaster. Only two lots seemed to be opeb (more were closed), but they were full. Traffic just kept circling around and being told to try the other lot. I eventually found a spot behind a warehouse not too far away and walked over. But, I couldn't cross the bridge to where the track was without a ticket, and the museum was on the other side of the bridge. So, I gave up and called it a day, went to the hotel and had a nice dinner. (The first course was cold cauliflower soup. I wouldn't normally get to excited at the thought of cold cauliflower soup, but it was actually really good).

A few days later, I did go back to Le Mans and see the museum in peace. It is up there with the Ferrari museum as places that petrolheads need to visit. It had a nice collection of cars from local manufacturers, plus a good selection of notable cars from the the 24 hours.
Of course, the GT40

From Le Mans

The Mazda rotary winner

From Le Mans

The Bentley

From Le Mans

And the Audi (diesel!) and Cadillac.

From Le Mans

And afterwards, I took a lap around (most of) the track. There are places where the road is blocked off and traffic goes through a roundabout, and there are places where the track is blocked off where it does a chicane. Only a couple of turns are really on the public road and even still you can't do much with them due to traffic. A historic, but not very engaging drive.

Next up, a whole bunch of castles.