We are currently staying in a chateau hotel just outside Poitiers. It's not quite as fancy-pants as it sounds - it's a small chateau and not super expensive - but it still is a nice little treat before leaving France.
It's called Le Clos de la Reibaudiere and dates from the late 1700s. The chateau itself isn't as pretty as others we've seen, but the grounds are gorgeous and the interiors are quite fancy. We are in a corner room on the top floor of a newer annex, and the views from our big windows are beautiful:
There is a fancy restaurant in our hotel, and since there seem to be no restaurants in the village we decided to go ahead and have lunch the first day here. We haven't done much proper French dining during our travels, so it seemed like a good thing to do before we leave. It was quite a fun experience, which seemed to take all afternoon!
We opted for the Menu de la Broue, which had two choices for each of the five courses. The French words were more complicated than usual so we didn't entirely know what we were ordering. But we brought the camera!
First, we both received a little glass of tomato puree with celery-tasting mousse on top. Yick. Then the appetizers:
The verdict: As we already knew, we just don't love French food, but everything seemed to be of high quality and was certainly presented beautifully. It was a long time until we were hungry again, but when the tummies began to growl around 9:00, we drove to a McDonalds! Perhaps sadly, we enjoyed that a lot more than our lunch. They have this thing called a Petit Wrap, which is a chicken breast with lettuce and ranch-like dressing inside a tortilla. I was pretty anti-McDonalds in the States, but I can't remember the last time I had a tortilla or ranch-like dressing, so I've become pretty fond of it.