Château de Beauregard: A Castle Road Less Taken
Tourists in the Loire Valley generally head only for the A-list castles. But for sightseers who dislike crowds and relish the possibility of running into a congenial chateau owner, quieter slices of 16th-century splendor are a few minutes away at the Chateau de Beauregard, 3 miles southeast of Blois.
Chambord, the Loire Valley’s XXL Château, Gets a Tourist Makeover
When you can't get any bigger, you just have to get better. Chambord, the massive chateau in the Loire Valley, 9 miles east of Blois, is in the midst of a major development plan (€4.5 million invested in 2014) to make the castle more user-friendly and, ultimately, self-financing.
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.
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
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.
“New Wine From France”: Documentary By American Jeanne Bernard Examines Biodynamic Vineyards in the...
An interview with Jeanne Bernard, an American from Louisiana living in Paris, author of “New Wine From France,” a documentary about biodynamic wine in France.
Equitation in the French Tradition Joins List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage has inscribed equitation in the French tradition, with specific reference to the Cadre Noir of Saumur (Loire Valley), on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
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...
Travel Beyond the Clichés While Looking Back In Angers
There I was in the local newspaper in a picture borrowed from the web and a paragraph hailing me as “a globetrotting American writer with a new book out entitled Travel Beyond the Clichés.”