France: Taking a boat under Chenonceaux castle!

Let's come back to France, for another castle that you may know: Chenonceaux!

Chenonceaux is one of the most famous and beautiful castle in France! It's one the "chateaux de la Loire", and was built like a bridge on the river on the west of Tours. It's an amazing renaissance castle, worlwide famous because built on the water. The castle is however very crowed, quite expensive, and hard to reach if you don't have any car (you should use the train from Paris). The castle is still owned by the family (which can explains the price of the visit - around 10€ - which will be used to balance the very high maintnance costs).

The gardens around the castle are quite huge, and beautiful (park, forest, labyrinthe, farm,...). The Loire is also very beautiful and well preserved (except when the huge tourists boats comes for taking some pictures of the castle). The castle was damaged several times by both german and americans troops during the second world war and had also a very long and interesting story (several important guests spent some time in Chenonceaux, from Louis XIV to US president Truman). However, most of the rooms of the castle are empty and not always well preserved. It doesn't mean the castle is not interesting! The atmosphere inside is still there and most of the rooms have an high historical importance.

 

My best memory there (and the reason of this post) was the short time spent on a boat on the river. I didnt know this would be allowed, but you can go under and around the castle, without being surrounded by thousands of tourists! I really appreciated this time! You don't need to book in advance, and the cost is totally affordable (something like 10 euros for 30 minutes, but you can be 4 in the boat).

To conclude, I would say this castle was one of the most beautiful I visited so far but I was also quite disapointed when I saw the countless tourists there... If you are in Paris, you can still reach the place! You can take a train to Tours from Gare de Montparnasse or Gare d'Austerlitz and then change from Tours to Chenonceaux. For more details, you can check this website.