Loire Valley: July 27-August 1, 2006

Paris and all of France have a certain reputation for being a romantic place. This part of our travels, through tiny villages in the countryside, visiting stately chateaus and medieval castles along the Loire River, certainly lived up to this reputation. It was a truly romantic setting, causing even pragmatic workaholics to get all dreamy-eyed and romantic.

We rented a car from Paris. Everyone told us not to do it. Even Craig’s mum warned us about the perils of driving in Paris. But we went from the Louvre around the super dangerous roundabout at the Arc de Triumph and miraculously tumbled out of the city. We spent most of our five days in hot pursuit of more castles. When we weren’t visiting castles we were gaping astonished by the fields of sunflowers or picnicking on baguettes, cheese, wine and other delectables. Long live French food.

Highlights of these days were two spectacular castles. We visited Chateau de Chambord, with its magnificent roofline of imaginative towers and turrets, and luckily caught a summer musical event. We watched a mandolin and bagpipe duo play on the roof terrace of the castle and even joined in a bunch of group dances. Then we went down to the gardens to have a picnic at sunset. When darkness fell they had a fascinating light show of images projected straight onto the castle façade as well as 3D Star Wars like projections of figures onto sheets of water in front of the castle. A play of shadows and colored lights also illuminated profiles of people dancing in the castle windows.

Our other amazing castle was the Chateau de Brieze, which is an underground castle. A really interesting look into life during the dark medieval ages, driven underground, and an amazing feat of architecture was made even more interesting by our tour. We arrived at the castle to discover that the English tour wasn’t held for another hour and a half. So, we did our own tour underground first and then did a fairly rushed winetasting at the wine cellar on site. We realized the wine went straight to our heads about the time the above ground English tour was starting. The tour guide had an exceptionally thick French accent and nobody could understand him at all. The looks on everyone’s faces and the wine swirling through our heads could not stop us from cracking up.


We finished our camping and touring through the Loire Valley with a wonderful night in Tours. It was a very perfect little summer trip.