Royal Gardens
More than 400 châteaux line the course of the gently flowing Loire. At every corner of the “Garden of France” there are gardens, churches, monasteries and parks. The glamour and drama of French history are our constant companions as we come across ornamental gardens, mazes, kitchen gardens and tropical greenhouses in the Loire Valley, and taste wines that can compete with the best in the world.
The EUROBUS readers' tour is run in cooperation with “Schweizer Garten”. It focuses specifically on the châteaux and gardens of the Loire Valley. During the four-day stay, all the highlights of the region are visited – from the royal residence town of Blois to the gardens of Villandry. Magnificent fortresses, enchanted Sleeping Beauty castles and majestically designed gardens await us.
In the EUROBUS Deluxe coach we travel via Basel through Burgundy to Tours, which welcomes us with picturesque lanes full of joie de vivre. Befitting these exclusive destinations, we travel in a Deluxe coach that offers all the necessary comfort: rows of three seats instead of the usual four, generous legroom, elegant ambience and a maximum capacity of 30 people. As is usual on all Deluxe tours, travellers stay in excellent 3- or 4-star hotels.
A Green Fairytale World
From Tours we travel to the magnificent buildings and gardens of the surrounding area. More than 400 châteaux can be found along the Loire and its tributaries, impressing with generous planting and expanses of water. A colourful variety of plants awaits us here: from the tulip garden of Château de Cheverny to the maze and kitchen gardens of Villandry. The backdrop is provided by the natural course of the Loire and the special charm of the hilly region.
We start in Blois with a visit to the château. Its fantastic interiors and magnificent spiral staircase tower seem to tell of political scandals and intrigues. Once the residence of the French kings, it combines buildings from four eras. The entrance of the château, designed in the late Gothic style, already shows the first elements of the Renaissance style and belongs to the wing of Louis XII – this is also where the 13th-century Estates Hall is found, the oldest secular Gothic hall in France and probably the most impressive room in this part of the château. The wing of Francis I, which housed among other things the former apartment of the French queen, is entirely in the Renaissance style: Catherine de' Medici died here in 1589.
Château de Blois looks like a pattern book of French architectural history – in complete contrast to the uniform Chambord, which we visit afterwards. In between, we treat ourselves to a snack of typical regional products before setting out to explore the building, which is surrounded by a moat. The largest château in the Loire Valley impresses above all with its dimensions: surrounded by a wall 32 kilometres long, the estate includes a hunting ground of more than 5 hectares. Built entirely in the Italian Renaissance style, it is, along with the famous Château de Fontainebleau, King Francis I's most extensive project.
Art and Geometry
In Azay-le-Rideau a Renaissance masterpiece awaits us, with a carefully arranged garden and geometrically clipped hedges. Balzac described the romantic moated château, gracefully reflected in the lake, as a “cut diamond”. In the artistically designed vegetable beds of Villandry we discover long-vanished varieties of vegetables. The colours in France's most beautiful terraced garden offer a different interplay depending on the season.
We round off the day with a guided city walk followed by dinner. The highlight of every Loire tour is planned for the last day: Château de Chenonceau was built on five arches over the river and, with its perfect harmony between architecture, wide landscape and idyllic river course, is exemplary of the fantastic buildings of the Loire Valley – and at the same time the ideal finale to our tour.