Loire Valley Castles (France): Chambord, Chenonceau, Blois & Villandry – Travel Diary

Having a lot of free time at the moment, I’m looking back at my old travels, through editing videos for the blog as well as storing the hard drive. There are three trips that I want to “dig up” because it brings back very good memories with my friends. Including this one to the Loire Valley castles.

It was in 2013, I had too many vacations, JB didn’t. I proposed to my best friend to go and visit the Loire castles to use our RTT days. It was thus in the cold that we left for 3,5 days of road trip.

He had to take care of the transportation and I had to take care of the housing. At that time, Airbnb was still something new, the rates were cheap compared to hotels and to find cheap accommodation right next to the castles, it was perfect. Airbnb at that time was still faithful to its B&B concept: Bed & Breakfast. With a private room in the owner’s accommodation. The owner had to prepare us a breakfast every morning. We didn’t know the concept very well so when he explained to us that we had to share the bathroom with him, we pulled quite a face ahahahah How things have evolved since then!

My friend already knew some of the castles but he didn’t mind visiting them again. As for me, I had not visited any of them, so we agreed on 4 castles that were considered unavoidable: Château de Chambord, Château de Chenonceau, Château de Villandry and Château de Blois. Being a null and void in the history of France, it was the occasion for me to know a little more about the kings of France, especially since these three castles offered free guided tours.

P/s : I took a lot of pictures at the time to train with my new reflex camera, but due to a computer failure and the theft of a laptop, I could only save a few pictures of this trip

Castle of Chambord

We started with the most beautiful one, because we were too eager to discover it. I didn’t imagine it to be so big, so sumptuous. Just to get to the castle, we had to cross a big forest, we drove for I don’t know how long. We secretly hoped to see a doe, or any wild animal, but we did not see anything unfortunately.

I don’t know if I planned it or if it was a stroke of luck, we managed to integrate the free guided tour to go around the castle (well, the most important rooms).

The coldness of this castle marked me, as well as the taxidermy room… and a particularly violent hunting scene on the wall. The most impressive of the castle is the staircase in double revolution, leading up to the top… from where one could see other towers with remarkable architecture.

The most impressive view was obviously the one where you could see the entire castle. It was sumptuous!

Castle of Chenonceau

You had to walk through a long row of trees to get to the castle. On the left was a small labyrinth. In my head, labyrinth + castle = Shining, the horror movie we were made to watch in Terminale. But nay! it was a maze for children. We did it anyway, hoping to find something nice in the center of the maze. Unfortunately no 🙁 I think that even so far, I have not visited any satisfactory maze. For good reason: the labyrinth in the movie “Shining” never existed in real life, so it is impossible to find in real life the equivalent of something that does not exist 🙂

Here is the castle! I know I know, the photo is badly framed but I show you what I have left on my hard drive 😀

This castle has the particularity of being directly on a bridge. In the kitchen of the castle, there would be holes for the cooks to bring down a bucket and directly recover the catch of the day, delivered by the fishermen. This castle was offered to Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henri II. And the pride of the castle, other than the kitchen utensils, is this large gallery above the “bridge”.

Obviously, the door on the other side of the bridge is closed. During the Second World War, the great gallery of Chenonceau was the only access to the free zone, the heir family facilitated the clandestine passage of all those fleeing the Nazi tyranny. The American president, Harry Truman, made it the site of his first visit to France. The floor above is still occupied by the heirs and not open to visitors.

We liked this castle so much that we stayed as long as we could. Even after the guided tour. There was a good atmosphere there I found, with a very feminine energy, nice details, light, there is a warm side contrary to the coldness of the Chambord castle.

Villandry Castle

Last stop: the castle of Villandry, super known for its sumptuous garden. Well, since we arrived at the worst moment, the garden was not at the top of its shape. We could visit the interior, which did not mark me at all. However, the visit was interesting overall, and we got some crisp details about the garden: before they employed about a hundred people. Now, with the machines, they have reduced it to 10 gardeners! There is another garden/vegetable garden next door, which is only used to replace the ugly plants in the main garden.

Having heard about the vegetables made available to visitors during the harvests, we inquired before receiving a scornful look, as if we thought we were at the Restos du Coeur, while we were just curious to taste the truly organic vegetables grown in a century-old vegetable garden. If she had pointed me to some jars of tomatoes to buy, I would have bought them with pleasure. Frankly, the attitude of the staff towards the issue really cooled me down, especially since they put it forward both on their website and in a documentary on TV. This castle also has a maze, but already disappointed by the one at Chenonceau, they didn’t want to explore it.

Edit September 2020, my sister visited the same castle in July 2020, here are the photos she sent me:

Blois Castle

Then, we went to visit the castle of Blois, which is actually composed of 3 castles, with heterogeneous styles. The guided tour was free there too, but as there were not that many visitors, it turned into a private visit and my friend, very familiar with that time, was able to ask a lot of sharp questions to the guide, who had surely made 10 theses about this castle and the kings of France. She knew everything, and could tell who was who on each painting. I remember, we spent a good half hour analyzing a painting evoking the assassination of the Duke of Guise.

It is here that we got a small glimpse of Catherine de Medici’s cabinet, and its small vials that would contain poison. This castle spoke to me the most among the castles visited during this stay because I saw Alexandre Dumas’ novel “La Reine Margot” (and saw the movie too) before coming so my knowledge about this time was relatively fresh in my head. Moreover, with such an interesting guide and a friend asking good questions, it made the visit extremely satisfying while the castle (small, dark and heterogeneous) was of little interest at first sight.

The city is superb, too bad we didn’t have time to linger there.

I hope you liked this little travel notebook. It is written from my memories so it is less complete than usual. Anyway, after this road trip, my friend and I decided to never have breakfast in an Airbnb again because what the owner prepared for us was too bad ahahaha 😀 If I had been told at that time that I would live all year round in Airbnb a few years later…