![]() You are living the dream! friends exclaim excitedly yet what we are doing is living our life, one step at a time, and this is just the next logical, if rather daring, step. My husband and I have both reinvented ourselves, changed professions and the course of our careers and our lives several times simply because it is how we are made. Married to a Frenchman, I am immersed in this culture, no longer an expat. I have lived in France, with an interlude of seven years in Italy, since 1987. Wander the narrow cobbled streets and you will be captivated by the medieval buildings and homes that still stand visit the Château, the old Royal Fort, and you will stand on the spot where Joan of Arc revealed and met Charles VII, convincing him to fight for France and his crown breathe in the air of this convivial town and you’ll understand how it inspired François Rabelais to write the bawdy, satirical, epicurean tales of Gargantua & Pantagruel. The Hôtel Diderot is situated in the heart of old Chinon a stone’s throw from the Château/ Forteresse Royale de Chinon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in the heart of the Loire Valley, along the Vienne River and surrounded by the vineyards of Chinon. Laurent and his sister Françoise, from whom we take over, have been renovating the hotel room by room since they bought it in 2003 and have created a beautiful, extremely calm and comfortable, and utterly charming hotel with an ambiance romantic, yes, but thoroughly welcoming and familial. ![]() The building was reconstructed and modernized in the 18th Century with the addition of upper floors, and finally the addition of the beautiful terrace and iron spiral staircase on the front (early 19th Century) and the annex with more rooms (20th Century) completed the Hôtel Diderot. The Hôtel Diderot began its life in the 15th Century. A bid, a dossier, interviews and the owners selected the two of us to take over their baby, this beautiful old house they have called home for a dozen years, a hotel they have recreated, reinvented, taken to heart. The decision was made even before I returned to France, and confirmed once Jean-Pierre and I visited the hotel together. A narrow white ironwork spiral staircase winding up to a second floor terrace, flowers in window pots and lining the front porch, white framed windows against limestone walls under a black slate roof left the impression of an old manor house built in the eighteen hundreds, lovely, calm and romantic. A gate opened to reveal a small courtyard and a beautiful old building half hidden behind a veil of greenery. And a single photo, rather gray and dim, but what I saw intrigued and excited me. ![]() A second email followed swiftly with the Hotel M Simond : what it looks like on google street view in the object line. It all started with an email I was visiting my mother in Florida this past July when I received the following message from Jean-Pierre: Hotel for sale in Chinon. This grand adventure, our new life in this enchanting hotel, discovering a new city and region while learning a new profession, is something so exciting for Jean-Pierre and I, a story waiting to be told, the new beginning that we've been waiting for, working towards for so many years. Guests will come and go, flow in and flow out, keys handed out, breakfasts served, rooms cleaned, wine tastings organized and animated, and I will write and write. The story will be a while in the telling, the adventure unfolding one day at a time and following the rhythm of the hotel. My head is spinning it is still rather surreal. When they say that life is an adventure, I believe that they must have meant this.
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