March 20

During one of our last vacations in France, while staying in Blois for a couple of days, we visited the nearby Chateau Chambord, one of the largest chateaux in France. It was an impressive building and it must have welcomed kings and queens over a few centuries. I don't know if the kings and queens from today's deck were among them, but the deck is titled "Chambord". We didn't buy the deck in the souvenir shop, we were much too late for that. It was printed by Heron and published in 1952, but I doubt that it ever was sold in the chateau. The deck comes with 2 similar jokers and an extra card. The designs by A. Belliard show content looking courts, some even smiling. Well, maybe because they were created in a time when in Europe countries were recovering from WWII and rebuilding their cities and society. Optimism was in the air. And looking at the latest corona numbers here, we could do with a bit of that now too.