We have an extra day in Paris. We can get to Tours but aren't sure we want to book a tour. Is it possible to hail a taxi to get us to Chenonceau and be able to get a taxi back to Tours.
We are in a time crunch and can only take one train that will meet the afternoon tour. Last time we were in France and tried to do this the trains were on strike.

Is Tours the best place to arrive to visit Chenonceau?

Thanks,

MBW

You can get a regional train from Tours to Chenonceau; the station and bvillage are just beyond the chateau parking lot entrance.

Some of the timings take less than 30 minutes; others, hours, depending on connections

Chenonceau is a long way from Paris.

You might consider visiting Vincennes, Fontainebleau, Chantilly, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versaille or even Chartres - all a great deal easier to reach than Chenonceau.

yes, it is the best place for overall connections, I think. Amboise is really closer, though, if you were going to take a taxi. And there is a bus from Amboise to Chenonceau, I took it.

I don't know if you can get to Amboise by train from Paris without going through Tours (St Pierre des Corps), though. I think you can from Paris Austerlitz (not Montparnasse). Although, changing trains at St Pierre may actually get you to Amboise quicker than going direct. There seems to be at least one morning run from Paris to Chenonceau that looks pretty good, though (9:10 - 10:31 arrival at Chenonceau). That may be the one day I checked, you'd have to play around with it.

It's only about 12 km from Amboise to Chenonceau but about 45 km from Tours.

Thanks for the recommendation. Would you take a taxi from the Amboise train station or could we rent bikes to get to Chenonceau?

Thanks,

MBW

Would I take a taxi versus renting bikes? you bet, but that's up to you, I don't know that highway that runs between Amboise and Chenonceau, but it isn't a major one so I suppose you could bike it. You'd have to get maps and everything, of course. BIking it will take a lot longer, also, I thought you were in a time crunch.

First of all, you do NOT go through Tours to get to Amboise by rail....you can take a regional from Paris and get to Amboise shortly after the stop in Blois.

You could get a taxi out to Chenonceau and I suspect you could bike it but it is several miles away.

Yup going to the dead-end Tours station means that you will, to reach Chenonceau by train go right back out via St-Pierre-des-Corps, which as Christina says is where you should have gotten off on the way down from Paris before the train shuttled into Tours proper.

St-P-d-C is the main station in Tours and has a lot more TGVs serving it than the dead-end Tours station. the new Chenonceaux (city has an x on the end, castle does not i believe) station, or really shed, is now right by the castle - the old one was about a mile away. But there is a paucity of trains so you must know schedules.