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Day 19: Loire Valley Castles - 30 Days In Paris France

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• published: 20 Oct 2010
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Day 19: Took a Cityrama bus tour. www.ParisCityrama.com . It is part of the same operation as Paris Vision who I took the Normandy tour with on day 16. It is a 12 hour tour so it gets an early start at 7:15am. Luckily the Metro was running smoothly at that hour so we made it to the pickup point without delay. We both slept for most of the 2.5 hour bus ride to the Loire Valley region. It was a two story bus and not as comfortable the single level bus from the Normandy tour. We had three tour guides onboard, English, Spanish, and Japanese. So during the ride each time an announcement was made it was repeated three times. We visited three castles during the tour. At each one our English speaking guide gave us headphone radios that were tuned to her microphone. She escorted us through the castles giving detailed descriptions and historical information along the way. After her presentation we were given some time on our own. At the second stop, the Chateau de Chenonceau, we were given time on our own for lunch and on the property we found a wonderful restaurant L'Orangerie, open March -- Mid November. This is a fancy "gastronomic restaurant" but the food was very good and reasonably priced. A full course meal would have made us late for the bus so we only had an entrée and dessert. Because a full meal takes so long the tour guides don't mention it when giving lunch options. At the last stop, Chateau Cheverny, after our guided tour, we ran into some of the property staff who were giving electric golf-cart tours of the wooded area surrounding the castle. We jumped in just as it started to rain. We also asked the driver to speed up the tour because we had to catch our bus. He took us into the cool damp woods and to a stream where we boarded a small electric boat and went for a ride. It was great. We noticed a dramatic difference between the first Castle, Chambord, which is a French Government owned park and the other chateaus which were privately run. The Family owners offered much more enjoyable experiences.