Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - France trip to the Loire

We recently spent two weeks in France. Eight days in the Loire and 5 days in Paris. We arrived at CDG and took the train to Tours and then rented a car and drove over to Chinon where we
had rented a Bed and Breakfast (http://www.chinon.com/vignoble/domai...our/usgite.htm) (http://www.domainedebeausejour.com/en/frch.html). We always use the internet to book our
hotels, here is a sample for anyone interested.

Bonjour:

We were hoping you have a room available in
September starting Sept 15th thru the 21st, (7 nights).
66.00 ? Tourelle Basse

Merci

Au revoir

Hello,
I have a room for the night of 15 thru the 21 st September for two
peoples.
The price is 66 Euros per night, breakfast inclued.
If you OK, can you tell me your credit card number or send me a
deposit.
Your sincerely.
PO MC Chauveau

We booked our tickets through 1800 fly Europe, Total Amount for our two roundtrip tickets were: $1,052.38
We departed from O'hare Int Airport at 6:20 pm and arrived at CDG the next morning at 9:35 am. Our trip actually started in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Our train didn't leave for Tours until around 1:30 in the afternoon. We went to a café in the airport and drank coffee for about a hour, we always do this to wake up and then walked over to the train station and sat there for the
next three hours taking turns sleeping on a bench.

The train ride was around two hours, maybe a little longer, over to Tours Where we picked up our rental car. It was around 4:00 pm in the afternoon before we finally got our car and started the drive over to Chinon.

We finally found our home for the next eight days around 5:30 in the afternoon. We drove up the long road to the house and found some people sitting outside who directed us back down the hill
to the office for the vineyard where a gentleman who we found out later was the owner directed us back up the hill to our room. He gave us the key and turned around and left. It was getting late
and we were starving, tired and had no idea where to go eat. We climbed very slowly back into the car and drove into Chinon to find something to eat. We parked the car along the river and walked into
town, stumbled into the first restaruant we saw and ordered some food, I ordered a steak and she ordered a pasta plate. Around 10:00 pm we arrived back at our room and fell into bed and didn't wake up
until the next morning around 9:00 am. Hell of a first day.

The lady of the house, winery, vineyard and everything else that happened came down and introduced herself to us and explained that she was gone when we arrived and that her husband was
the person that escorted up to our room the day before. She gave us a tour of the property and invited us up to the "big house" for breakfast. We had coffee, bread, fruit and yogart. We also
met a British couple that was staying there. They were the nicest people and we enjoyed eating breakfast with them every morning, we had some very interesting conversations over the next few days.

Over the next week we visited:

Chinon
The Castle overlooking Chinon
Usse'
Villandry
Chateau d'Azay-le-Riduau
Fontevraud Abbaye
Chenonceau

I could go on and on about our trip and if anyone is interested I will write more. How I hate trafic circles, going through villages with one lane roads, watching the opening of hunting season with guns going off and horns blaring, taking walks in the early morning through the fields while my better half was getting ready. Going into Chinon and buying food and wine and then going back to our "home" and eating outside our room watching the sun go down. How it was so quite I almost went crazy the first few days.