Yesterday we took a trip to a local chateau. It’s funny living in a place where you can visit castles in your spare time. It’s not like the United States which is comparatively young and so has much less history and less need for castles.
Well the one we visited is the Chateau de Boutheon and it’s in the town where I teach. It’s not very large itself, but there are two main buildings and the grounds – which include a courtyard with some funny trees, a garden area, and a “zoo” (for lack of a better term).
The interiors of the buildings have been converted to museums, not art museums or period decor, but everything about the region – la département de la Loire. For example there is a section about local cuisine (via a game in the kitchen), local language, and even the local aquatic life – a full on aquarium shows the animals we find in the Loire River and the surrounding area.
Above I said zoo in quotations because it is not quite a zoo more like a grounds with fences and a mix of domesticated farm animals (chickens and things) and other random animals like pigeons.
I thought it was kind of cool and that the aquarium in particular was a great idea. Something I don’t know if I would have thought of – to show an ecosystem of the area.