Loire Valley

A perfect weekend trip from Paris is to rent a car and visit famous Chartres cathedral and Loire Valley, both of which are UNESCO heritage sites. An original way to escape crowds of tourists was to stay in roulottes, old style travel wagons with modern equipment, located by the stream in a tranquil countryside, conveniently close to Loire castles.

A weekend is too short to visit all the castles in Loire Valley but we managed to see five most interesting ones: Blois, Amboise, Chenonceau, Chambord, and Cheverny. I thought that the most magnificent were chateaux of Chambord and Chenonceau. Chambord, a retreat for French kings, especially Louis XIV, has a unique architectural design with numerous fairy-tale towers and expansive hunting grounds.

Chenonceau's beauty lies in that it was built across the river with a reflection in water. An interesting fact is that the King Henry II of France gave the castle to his beloved mistress Diane de Poitiers but after his death his wife Catherine de Médici banished Diane from Chenonceau and made many changes to the caste. However, she left lovely Diane's garden unchanged and established her own garden across from it.