Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Lonely Planet Chateaux of the Loire Valley Road Trips (Travel Guide)

Top positive review

5 people found this helpful

SO MANY CASTLES......SO LITTLE TIME!

ByMarie Antoinetteon August 16, 2015

My husband and I were fortunate to visit the Loire Valley in 2013. We spent four nights there, giving us three full days to visit some of the castles. We actually toured seven castles and by the end of the third day we were all "castled out"! Each caste has its unique beauty and history. It's hard to choose which castles to visit since there are so many to choose from. Before my trip I did research on the area to help me decide.

This book is a good supplement to a more detailed travel guide on the Loire Valley as well as the Burgundy region. There are four road trips detailed in this book: Chateaux of the Loire (5 days), Caves & Cellars of the Loire (3 days), Medieval Burgundy (6 days) and Route des Grands Crus (for the wine lover) (2 days). The second half of the book focuses on additional destinations for both the Loire Valley and the Burgundy region.

If you only plan on seeing two or three castles, on top of my list would be Chateau de Chambord for its sheer magnificent over the top architecture. Another castle not to be missed is Chateau de Villandry for its extravagant and colorful gardens (we were there in September and the flowers were in full bloom). If you visit Chateau D'Amboise make sure you also visit Le Clos Luce, it's just up the street in Amboise and it's the manor house where Leonardo da Vinci spent the final years of his life. The best part of da Vinci's manor is down in the basement where there are many sketches, scale models and other interesting things he created are displayed for the public. In its courtyard there are a couple of restaurants where you can take a break from all the touring and have a relaxing lunch outdoors with some local wine.

As far as transportation goes, after spending a few days in Paris, when it was time to leave we picked up a rental car and drove to the Loire Valley since many of these castles are not near public transportation or railways. It took us approximately two hours to get there from Paris and it was actually a pleasant drive; once we left Paris, the highway opened up and there was no traffic.

This book is small and compact enough to take it with you as you explore these beautiful regions of France.

Top critical review

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3 people found this helpful

Remanufactured

ByMussSykeon September 10, 2015

In this 126 page book, mostly lifted From France country guide and France Discover, 18 pages in the back are exactly the same as that of "Provence and Southeast France Road Trips" (Ok, so one line is off, pushing back the formatting a bit to hopefully fool you). Also a few pages in front are the same stuff you get in every LP. After an extended version of their typical itineraries section, which looks a bit like their Discover series because of the extra pictures, it just moves on to "Destinations", which is a condensed version of their regular country guide (when they were in color for a short time).

Also, these few hundred km max drives don't really strike me as a road trip. "Road Trip" has me thinking exciting 6000km loops around the top half of Argentina or most of Turkey, not a spec of France. And they have a section on "driving", which sort of makes sense, except what is there to know about driving in France? It's the same as anywhere else in the West with no particular dangers or pitfalls.

Lonely Planet is no longer a couple of happy hippies, they're a giant corporation who want all your money, even if it means manufacturing an entire new line of books right from the desktop with staple footage. I'm continuously amazed how many books repackage the same material.

It's really okay. It's fun to look at for a few minutes. But why bother?