Loire Valley Travel Tips

Last Updated on June 1, 2024 by Roslin Dwivedi

How to plan and decide which Castle to visit? Let’s look at some Loire Valley Travel tips with a baby. We spent a couple of nights planning just the right Chateaux to visit. So I would suggest you go like this. Firstly, decide how many days you will be able to spend in visiting the Chateaux, check which ones you would like to see. Ideally 2 days in Loire Valley is worth spending. I have a few favourites listed down, but of course, you can do more than what we did. Once you have the first two questions figured out, then you decide on a location for your hotel. Based on the proximity of your hotel from the Chateaux, you want to determine your day driving around the Loire valley. Most of these Chateaux is a bit of drive between each other, so you want to keep this in mind. 

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Plan and visit the right Castles to make the most of your Trip. 

Loire Valley chateaux map

Why is it necessary to include a map? The simple answer is – to plan better. Keep the google offline map download on your phone, which will guide you through the short roads or highways to help you reach the right destination and save some time for you to visit the place for longer. Work as a GPS for you. 

Length of vacation: How many days in Loire Valley 

Consider the duration of your holiday. We stayed two nights in Tours France, read about the city of Tours and the surprise we got there. And we were supposed to visit Loire Valley from Tours France. Many private and group tours are operating from Paris to Loire Valley. If you like you can opt for this option too. The day we arrived in Tours France it was already half a day left. There was no way we could have gone to visit one of the Castles in Loire Valley because of the time limitations. So we decided to visit Tours half the day and the next day we started early to see a few Castles depending upon its distance from one another.

Car hire

Why hire a car? Will it come under my budget? The answer is yes. While planning for our trip, my research showed me that group tours Or private tours were much more expensive. You will find agencies offering full-day tours with lunch starting for around 200 euros per person per day. For us we had a baby, we had our things to consider according to our baby’s needs. Also, the car hiring rate was 60 Euros a day we hired from Tours train station. And again, if we wouldn’t like any castle, we had the freedom to leave for another one without wasting time or waiting for others to come.

Where to eat

We had one huge Panini each for lunch, from a small food kiosk in Chenonceau, to skip the long queue at the restaurant for approx. 20 Euros. So in total, we didn’t spend much, but we had fun unlimited on our terms.

Check for renovation or Close 

Once you have decided which ones to visit, check by calling them or from hotel staff if any castle is closed on the day or if it’s closed for renovation this will save time, energy, money and disappointment.

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 How to reach Loire Valley 

If you’re visiting from Paris, you can take a train or drive to the Loire Valley. You can take a train from Paris Montparnasse station and go to Tours(France). From there you can book a tour or rent a car to visit the rest of the area. Well, from Tours you can use GPS or the help of Google map.

Next thing will be Choose the sides

 If you look at the map, you will be confused about which ones are the right choice to make. The Castles are spread around from Tours. One side of Tours has Châteaux d’Amboise, Châteaux de Chenonceau, Châteaux de Cheverny, Châteaux de Blois and Châteaux de Chambord. The other hand you have Châteaux de Villandry, Châteaux d’Ussé, Azey-le-Rideau, Samur, Chinon and many more. We only had just one day to see all of these, so we chose the right side of Loire Valley, to start from Tours(France). From where the Châteaux are closer to each other. We started early in the morning to reach Amboise, our first Castle. We also had to buy tickets on all the castles we visited.

Keep in mind the distance and time you may take learning about it

We chose to visit Chateau d’Amboise first, which was the closest from tours, then Château de Chenonceau, because it was close to each other. And then we went to see Château de Chambord and finally Château de Blois. 

Honestly, our first decision was to go for the longest distance first and then come back to the Castle closer to our accommodation. But looking at the long distances and massive Castles we decided to see the closer one first with our full attention and freshness rather than get tired driving for distant one and visit the Castle with zero energy.

Accommodation suggestion

We stayed at Tours at Novotel Tours Centre Gare, which was next to the railway station. It was very convenient for us to go round the town. After taking a one day trip to Loire valley, we could easily take the train the next day early morning to Paris back, to catch our train for Geneva.

It’s nice to choose tours for accommodation if you want to stay close to the railway station for your next journey. In case you have to travel to another city in France or travel back to Paris for the airport.

Chateaux Pass

I will suggest chateaux pass if you have enough days to travel. For us, we had one day, and we had planned to visit three castles but ended up seeing two with their entire garden.

The third one we didn’t buy tickets, and we hung around outside the Castle in the peripheral though we did some photoshoots with the stunning Chateau De Chambord.

We bought tickets at the window over there, before entering the chateaux.

Right from the start of our journey from Tours(France) to Loire Valley, we faced no problems in our baby’s comfort. He was alright on the long drives and about his feeding and changing diapers we had no issues finding the place. Most importantly, the people, I also mean the crew at the Castles, you will find are very friendly and helpful. 

You can read about our Loire Valley journey in Loire Valley one day trip (with a baby)

So there you have some tips for planning for Loire Valley (with a baby. That’s how we designed our Voyage. I hope these tips help you plan your holidays too. These are my suggestions but if you agree with our ideas then go for it. The plan did not disappoint us, and I hope you also enjoy the Trip.  If you have some other tips then these, please write that in the comments. Who knows I could use those on our next visit. If you are in Paris, I would highly recommend this place to consider in your itinerary.

Happy Trip, you all.