Want Great Wine, Great Castles, and Great people? Go to the Loire Valley! (Loire Valley (France))

Member Name: i_heart_elo

Product:	Loire Valley (France)
Date:	05/03/09 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Wine, Great Castles, Great People.....those are kick a** advantages

Disadvantages: It's not really easy to access via Train, you really do need to have a Car to fully appreciate it

When I think of the Loire Valley, I think of one of the most enjoyable Family "touristy" days i've ever had. Sometimes, when we go on holiday with our families, we can have a good time together, but there is always something missing isn't there?

How often have you been vacationing somewhere gorgeous where you waste hours and hours everyday arguing amoungst your family about "where to go", and "what to do"? Or, how many times have you gotten into a little skirmish with someone your travelling with? What about when you were sick that one time and had to stay at your hotel/villa, and your family went sightseeing without you. Then it turns out they met a famous person and had the best day of their entire trip on that day you were sick?

Yeah.....sometimes, it's not always CRAZY FUN to go on holidays with your entire family. Then again, sometimes....it is. Our trips to the Loire Valley are always amazing. We continued to find something new to do, and never disagreed about where to go. It was like the place had some magical "getting along together", hold over us.

In the Loire Valley, you dont fight.....you don't argue.....you don't get bored.....you don't whine.....you don't feel tired.....you don't frown. My mother said " The Loire Valley is like Brigadoon". You'll only get that statement if you actually watched that old movie with Gene Kelly. What she meant by that is there is some type of, ethereal quality about the region that you have to see to believe.

Despite my drama queen sounding antics above, I'm being quite serious. The Loire Valley is one of my top three reasons Why I still love France. I'll briefly give you a glimpse into the region that I'd kill to have a summer home in. =)

***** Loire Valley - Chateau de Chambord*****

Even if this review page didn't have the picture of this Chateau for everyone to see, it would still be my first choice.

It's rare for my family to all agree on something "completely". Maybe that didn't come out right? What I mean is.....if one of us "likes" something, the other will "kinda like it"......., then another will say " it's ok" , and, another will say " I dunno what I think about it", then there is always one that says " I hated it"! It's so hard to find something that everyone likes EQUALLY.

With Chateau de Chambord, we ALL loved it. And when I say loved, I mean....l-o-v-e-d it. As your driving up to the Chateau, and you see it in the distance, it's hard not to pull the car over and start snapping pictures. There is a bit of Japanese Tourist in us all sometimes. So, when we see something visually striking we have no quams with getting out our cameras in order to take a piece of that home with us.

To say this Chateau is only visually striking is a vast understatement. There is so much more to this place. The history of the Chateau itself for starters.

* HISTORY LESSON TIME *

This Chateau is quite old. Maybe not Scottish or German Castle old, but close. It started being built in the 1500's by Francois I. It was in construction for many years during his reign, but he only ended up living in it for a few weeks before he died! The amount of work involved in building this place is staggering.

Not only the money it must have taken at the time, but the innovative architecture is impressive. I was surprised to find out that the grand staircase that runs through the very middle of the Chateau, was supposively designed by Da Vinci himself! Now I can say I walked on Da Vinci's staircase......I understand it's JUST a staircase, but.....you haven't seen this staircase. It is , it's own entity. Google this Chateau and look at the pictures of it. You'll be wowed, I assure you.

As we walked through, I translated various signs and plaques. Each one I came upon and read you could hear me say " What?!" out loud several times. Oh, and I also said a lot of "Your Kidding Me's". Since i've been told I have a miniature flare for the dramatic, I translated with a little bit of embellishment. By the time we ended our Castle tour, my mother thought the place was haunted, my sister wanted it turned into a Hotel, my brother wanted to write his thesis about it, and my Father just kept saying "Facinating".

I'll tell you the summerized history about the castle and share a few of my "embellishments" with you.

Apparently, like I mentioned above, King Francois I had this castle commisioned for no real reason since, he didn't even get to live there. Although, there are plenty of Tapestries he had collected and commissioned over the years that are hanging all over the walls. He was like your typical rich CEO billionaire. They have a mansion built, and are more interested in making it BIG and grandious, instead of residing there. That being said, apparently Francois I was a good king and the country did florish under his reign. When he died though, the castle was.....empty.

It wasn't just empty for a few yrs, it was empty for almost 100 yrs after, until the new King gave it as a gift to the Duc d'Orleans. During the century it had been abandoned, it was full of animals and dirty and decay. Can you imagine seeing this magnificant castle just abandoned for nearly 100 years? It sounded like something out of Sleeping Beauty to me. Was the castle cursed? (Embellishment #1 - Yes, I told my family that the Francois I cursed the castle and said he would haunt whomever was living there at the time).

After the Duc d'Orleans got it from his brother the new King (He was one of the Louis's, I think the XIII. ), he started renovations of it. Of course, not living there, just making it MORE grandious. His renovations took a while so he only resided there for a year or two when he died, then it passed on to the new King....another Louis.

Now, what they said was that Francois I already had Cheateau's all over France. What he built this Chateau for was as a hunting lodge. This area of the Loire is famous for it's forests and later on, i'll tell you about the National Forest there, and where you can go Wild Boar watching. I digress.....back to this so-called "hunting lodge".

A HUNTING LODGE? Are you kidding me? What about this Chateau says LODGE? It looks like princesses and ladies in waiting should live here, or the Castle of Beauty and the Beast. Good ole Francois was deluding himself here to think he could go kill some boar, bring it back to this monstrosity and feel manly. Anyways....

The King Louis that had it next added a massive amount of stables. I think it was enough to house over 1000 horses. Apparently Louis loved his horses and wanted to be doing some major fox/boar hunting.

* Sidenote*
The strange thing about the placement of this Chateau is that there really isn't any village nearby. Most Castles, Schloss, and Chateau's , have at least a village or town within walking distance, but this place was known for it's seclusion.

When your on the massive grounds, you'll see a portion of the stables and see that there is even various equestrian events that take place on the property and the stables to this day. At least THAT got some use. It was noted that the stables were used more than the Chateau itself.
(Embellishment #2 - When I mentioned about King Louis and his 1000+ horsing stables, I added that the King actually slept in the stables because when he had spent one night in the Chateau, the Ghost of Francois pushed him off the bed and told him to get out of his house.....I can't believe they believed that too.....it wasn't even that original of an embellishment!)

Since the Louis King was really was only there a few weeks a year for his hunting trips, the Castle was again, virtually abandoned. When he died, it was completely empty again for 40 yrs. Until....A deposed king of Poland was granted Sanctuary there for about 10 yrs. ( So a Polish king that was kicked out of his country, so far, had lived in the Chateau for the longest time out of the 200 yrs the castle had been around.....how's that for mind-boggling).

After said Used-to-be-King-of-Poland left, it then was passed on to another and another and another. During these "anothers", it was left emtpy again many times. One plaque said, that if you look the amount of time lived in the castle by all the "owners" of it, it only amounts to....

80 yrs

So this 500 yr old castle, only had someone living it, for 80 yrs. It was even brought out that when the owners would leave, they would NOT leave servants or attendants or stewards on the property. It would be closed up completely. I'm not sure why, but that was spooky! AND...wasteful. All the money that was put into this gorgeous chateau, and very few people took advantage of it. If I had lived during the time they had "closed up" this Chateau, I would have claimed Squatters Rights to it, you can be damn sure of that!

##### End of History Lesson #####

* And now, the Rest of the Story........*

This Chateau is probably most famous now for the Liquor of his namesake. Chambord liquor is a very spicey blackberry flavoured drink in a distint purple "crown" bottle. You can even stop by the headquarters of the Liquor makers. It has a huge gate with a large "Crown" in the middle, that stands maybe....30 feet tall? It's massive. And in the distance you can see a miniature Chateau/Mansion. Obviously, the liquor sells well enough to support a very lavish looking headquarters.

Outside of the Chateau they have several little gift shops in a "made up" little village look. It has an ice cream shop, a cafe , and a few Souvenir shops. They are incredibly reasonable as well. Generally , you expect tourist type gift shops to take full advantage of it's guests. Instead, you could get a cafe and a croissant for 4 euros (most "un cafe's" cost you 4 euros alone). Then you can buy sketches and paintings of the Chateau for only a couple euros as well.

The Cost of visiting the Chateau was only 12 euros each for adults over 25 yrs old, and 9 euros for under 25. Which to me, is very reasonable. Warwick and Edinburgh Castle charge you around 15 pounds. With the Chateau De Chambord, you get access to the entire Chateau and it's gorgeous grounds which cover a broad area. You also didn't have to pay for parking (amazing isn't it?).

My family and I spend about 4 hrs at this place from around 10 am till 2pm and, if we didn't have more things we wanted to see in the Loire Valley, we could have stayed there even longer!

If you visit France, and want to do something other than Paris (which I would recommend....there is SO MUCH more to France than Paris), take in this Chateau. I've been to dozens of them in France, and this one is without a doubt the most impressive.

*****Drive up to Someone's Personal Vineyard*****

The Loire Valley is littered with Vineyards. Especially in the area of Cheverny and Chinon. Many French will have mixed feelings about the wines in this area. They'll say Bordeaux is the King of Vineyards, but I'm not sold on that. The Loire Valley has a very broad amount of wines available. Even if you consider yourself a namby pamby wine afficianado, you cannot refute the quality of grapes in this region. The Muscadat is a special type of grape unique to the region. I only found this out because several of the "Vignerons" (The ones who work at the Vineyards), were more than eager to educate us about the region.

When we were at Chateau de Chambord, I asked a women in French where to go to do some local wine tasting. She recommended Cheverny since that was the closest. As we drove through the town and it's outskirts, it was obvious this place was dedicated to the Vine. We found dozens of signs to various vineyards and just started....Vineyard hopping. =)

The first we went to was very small and had "so-so" tasting Whites and not so good, Reds. We weren't discouraged though, and moved on to several others. It was so easy to buy a few bottles each time, because out of the dozen or so we visited, only 2 were not that amazing. One of my favorites was called "Domaine Du Moulin" on the border of Sologne. We bought a case of Cheverny White and a Pinot Noir to split amongst us and we drank those cases up in a few weeks.

Loire Valley wines aren't incredibly expensive. It was even more surprising to find out that our fave the Domaine Du Moulin, wines, were one of the least costly. Chinon is another region and type of wine I really like that is sometimes "poo poo'ed". I was able to get a case of very Chinon for only 4 euros a bottle. I found the very same one, at a local winery in Versailles months later, and it was 17 Euros. I was half wanting to re-sell them to winery for a nice little profit, but I liked the wine too much to part with it.

***** What Else Is there? *****

I guess other than the picturesque villages, towns, and Chateau's, the great Wines and friendly locals.....there isn't a whole lot else I can think of. Yet, I think those things are more than enough to make an area more than worthwhile.

It's a valley of rolling hills, many different Castles, open roads, fantastic wines, and NICE French people. What else is there to want?

Summary: Learn the history of Chateau de Chambord and the Wines of Loire Valley