Back in January I mentioned that our big trip this year would consist of two weeks in France. We’ve now hammered out our plan some more:
The plan is as follows. Follow along on the map for extra fun!
- Land in Paris (trust me, the ‘A’ is hidden behind the ‘K’) and jump in a car
- Visit Chartres
- Visit the Chateau de Chambord and start driving along the Loire valley
- Visit Tours, and other small towns along the way like Amboise and Candes-St-Martin
- Visit Angers, and from there turn north
- See Mont-Saint-Michel, though after the experience we had at Rocamadour I think we’ll just take pictures from the outside
- Visit Juno Beach
- Visit the Vimy Memorial
- Visit Reims
- Spend a few days in and around Epernay and Troyes, sampling Champagne and meeting up with my brother
- Drive back to Paris, drop the car and spend about five days there…probably visiting the Louvre a couple of times, the Musee D’Orsay, Versailles, maybe the catacombs, maybe just hanging out in St-Germain or Montparnasse.
So that’s the plan.We’ll cover A through I in first six days, then as our energy wears off we’ll start to wind down in Champagne and take the better part of the final week in Paris.
Anybody have any tips for those areas? Any can’t-misses?
I’d say that Chateau de Chambord looks like a good choice. You can easily get chateaux overload in the Loire Valley. We saw a nice one in Blois.
Au Bacchus Gourmet in Epernay has cordon bleu cuisine that’s fun if you’re willing for your food to be odd.
In Reims, St Remi’s Basilica and Reims Cathedral are both worthwhile.
Yeah, I think we’ll explore Chambord, but then treat the rest as drive-by photo ops. Same for cathedrals: I figure if we start with Chartres and end with Reims, and we’ve already seen Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle in Paris, we can gloss over all the rest in between.
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nice plan!!!
Some suggestions:
Loir valley: Château of Chenonceau
Normandy: Bayeux for the tapestries, Deaville for its beaches and promanade, Etretat & Fecamp
Paris: lunch at Cuisine de Bar on rue Cherche-Midi in the 6th and the Poilane bakery next door. Also promenade plantée also known as the Coulée verte is a 4.5 km-long elevated park in the 12th arrondissement
david
This is so funny because I could not remember the name of a town I visited – yet again another Notre Dame…Googled it and got this blog. I loved all the traveling I have done in France and agree about Chenonceau – so pretty. be sure to go there. Chambord is good and try to hit Cheverny at feeding time for the hounds…very interesting! I loved Amboise and Le Clos Luc. We had a very nice lunch in Cumieres at Le Caveau. Try to stop there.
Not sure if this is in time for your trip or not as the post did not give the dates of your trip, but have fun! And Bon Apetit!