Coveting My Neighbor's Chateau

Following the progress of the restoration of this French chateau is just plain masochistic.   Ugh.  

   

           Plenty of envy producing pictures at: Chateau de Gudanes restoration website

I know, in the way that one virtually knows people they've met once and are friends with on fb, a gilding and historic restoration expert whose resume includes, no kidding, the restoration of the rail separating Marie Antoinette's bed from mere mortals.  Among other credits.  Now all I have to do is raise the million plus euros to buy one of the plethora of available chateaus scattered about the French countryside.

 

My French sister-in-law sent this to me last year and I was happily surprised to find a profile of Laurent Hissier, the craftsman who took Elissa and me behind the open areas of chapel in Versailles a couple of years ago.  She had connected with him on Facebook and called him from the gates of the Chateau from her cell phone and he came down from his office to show us around. Now he and I are fb friends and he's gracious enough to respond to my occasional stalker-like communications.

I have no idea where I got this picture!  Now I really feel like a stalker!  I put his name in an Search box in IPhoto and voila!  Maybe I took it from his fb page and forgot about it.  If so, it's the only one I lifted, because it's all my search revealed.  

Oh, except this one, but Laurent knows about it.  I 'fessed up long ago on that cowardly, opportunistic shot I snuck while he was showing us around Versailles.  He even posted a comment on my blog about it.  Okay, this is just shameless name dropping now.  That's enough.

Here's the original post about him.