Chaumont Playfully Imagines Gardens of the Future
Corinne LaBalme reports on the International Garden Festival at Chaumont, one of the most delightful castle ground strolls in the Loire Valley. With “Gardens from the Coming Century” as its theme for 2016, the festival presents the brave new world of flower beds, hydroponics and botanical fantasies. Castle-hoppers exploring the valley and day-trippers from Paris take note.
Europ’Amazones: Side-saddling Horsewomen Bring Pageantry, Sport and Elegance to Lion d’Angers
Versailles’s got its royal stables, Chantilly’s got its noble horse museum and Saumur’s got its Cadre Noir, but for me as a horse-lover watching the horsewomen at the National Stud Farm at Le Lion d'Angers is paradise. By Justyna Gawąd
The Clos Lucé Enhances Its Connection with Da Vinci in Amboise (Loire Valley)
With three paintings in his luggage—Mona Lisa, St. Anne and John the Baptist—Leonardo da Vinci made the long and arduous journey across the Alps to Amboise via mule-train and riverboat in 1516 at the well-paid request of King François I, his last noble patron.
Auberge des Templiers: Where the Relais & Châteaux Dream Began
Today’s Relais & Châteaux spans the globe from A(rgentina) to Z(ambia), with 544 resort/restaurant “members.” Of course, all this glamor had to start somewhere and “somewhere” turns out to be roughly 80 miles south of Paris, between Burgundy and the Loire Valley, at a quiet, family-run inn called the Auberge des Templiers.
Great Encounters: Blois
Even without knowing much of the historical bla-bla about Blois, this Loire Valley town is a place of fascinating, magical, entertaining and tasty encounters. So before describing why Blois is considered the linchpin of understanding the history and architecture of the Loire Valley I’d like to introduce you to some of the people and characters that I encountered during a day of research throughout the town.
Loire Valley: Where There’s a Château There’s a Garden Waiting to Be Discovered
The chateaux of the Loire Valley each tell a story, many stories in fact, mostly told in limestone and slate. But not all of its stories are written in stone. Some are also told in vegetation (gardens, parks, woods and forests) and water (rivers, streams, canals and basins).
Blond Girl in Saumur: When Our Eyes Met for the Second Time
A photo/video-log from the Saumur area of the Loire Valley in which Gary Lee Kraut remembers when travel was less about fooding and more about flirting, less about getting reservations and more about losing inhibitions, less about looking for recommendations and more about following your own nose.
Elsewhere along the Loire: Val d’Aubois
You’d be the rare traveler, French or foreign, to have heard of the Val d’Aubois, the Aubois Valley, a largely bypassed portion of Loire...
The Marquis, the Hounds and Château de Cheverny
The elegant Château de Cheverny is "chez moi" for Charles-Antoine de Vibraye and his family. Call him "marquis" if you like. His ancestors have resided on the premises for the better part of 600 years. Cheverny was one of the first private French estates to open its gates to the public, and de Vibraye welcomes on average 350,000 guests per year to his castle-sweet-castle.