The Chateaux Finding Mission in the Loire Valley

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We learned that Sunday is an extremely quiet day in France. We knew that going in, but we couldn't fathom just how quiet it is. Everything was closed (except a few boulangerie in the morning), and there were few people to be seen anywhere. Makes us wonder, where do these people go? If they're spending the day with family, how come no one was out for a walk? It wasn't always raining so you'd think at least they were out visiting people...

We started off the morning just outside of Chartres, staying in a hotel just off the autoroute. This was the day to explore and hunt the castles of the Loire valley. Well what I mean by explore is drive, see from the outside, click, click, click and move on. If we spent ten euros each for entrance to each castle, we wouldn't be able to afford the rest of the trip. Unfortunately the Loire valley received us with a lot of rain and cloudiness, and also since it's still winter, we weren't able to see it in all it's green and vineyard glory. But we did take a nice scenic route through many picturesque towns as we were hunting for chateaux! The beginning of the trip took us through green fields and flat farmland. We followed the Loire from when it was a bit bigger than a stream till it became a full fledged river. As it grew bigger, the hills rolled and the more trees grew.

Here are the towns we visited:

Chartres: cute little downtown area but we didn't stop because 1) we kept getting lost and B) it was too quiet, but there was no parking because everyone was at the big church in the centre.

Iliers-Combray: A very small sleepy town. We didn't find any castles as we walked around, but the biggest action we found was the huge line up at the boulangerie. We had followed people who were carrying baguettes all around town, it wasn't hard to spot the place where they came from when we passed it. We decided that since we're so good at queuing now since living in London, we would join the line and see what the hype was about. We bought two delicious, baguettes - I guess this is the Sunday tradition in this town.

Châteaudun: the castle here is huge and sits on a cliff overlooking the new part of the city, and the Loire river. It was built between the 12th and the 16th centuries (different parts of the castle added). It looks like its in great shape. We also explored the old town, walking around the tourist circuit, which showed us some nice views of the city.

Vendôme: Here is where it started raining and we got drenched. The town is actually quite cute, probably not quite as old as medieval. Again the streets were quiet so we didn't spend much time in the town. The highlight was the castle (Castle of the Counts of Vendôme), which sat in ruin on top a hill overlooking the town. We're not really sure what happened there, but it is the only castle ruins we've seen that you can see turrets that have fallen to the ground (and still lie there today). Pretty cool. It was free to get into the grounds once we climbed the hill up to it, so we were all over that.

Blois: very beautiful city, would have loved to spend more time there, but it was so cold and rainy that we didn't want to walk around for too long. Here the Loire is very big: this is the heart of the valley. Blois got bombed heavily during WWII, unfortunately, so many of the buildings are new. The government decided not to rebuild the city as it was before the war, but they rebuilt the city with better planning to maximize views and beauty. It really is pretty. Overlooking the Loire is a beautiful palace (former royal residence to many Kings of France, such as Henry III, Henry IV, Louis XII and Francois I), that did not get destroyed in the war. It was built between the 13th and 17th centuries, and now it is owned by the city and is just a tourist attraction.

Chenonceaux: We stopped here because we had seen amazing photos of the chateau... but, by the time we got here the Chateau was closed for the evening. We walked around a bit anyways, because the town itself was very cute.

We really enjoyed driving around and seeing these unexpected chateaux pop up out of nowhere. We saw many beautiful ones and some in ruin. It's really neat because as you are driving along, you very often see signs indicating that a chateau is coming up. One of the best castles we saw this way was in Amboise.

We finished for the night in Bourges, having booked a super cheap hotel on booking.com. It wasn't very nice, but got the job done!

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Photos

The Caves in Vendome
In this region of France, caves are very common (they are dug out of the soft rock). People still live in these caves, using them as a basis from which to build their house. The house caves are very desirable and expensive.

Exploring Blois
The Rain Doesn't Get Elysia's Spirits Down!

The Back of the Chateau in Blois
Don't mind the rain spots! Thank goodness for waterproof cameras!

As Close As We Could Get to the Chateau in Chenonceaux
It was closed by the time we arrived...