Day trip to Loire Valley from Paris

If you take the TGV to St Pierre des Corps, you'll have a longer time in the Tours/chateau area than if you go in a road vehicle.

The fast train gets there way faster than a car/bus/van can.

If you go in a road vehicle, much of your day is spent getting there and back.

Because of the large amount of train time, I would not go on this trip. But if you will never have another chance in your life to visit some Loire castles, it sounds fine. I'd make sure that you can meet-up at the right time for the start of the tour. Transportation between castles is absolutely essential, so paying for a full-day tour makes sense, once you decide you like the tour. You need, maybe, to do some more reliability and quality review searching.

I'd feel better if the website showed the actual timetable and named the meeting point. I don't think you'll find anyone on this website who has been on this actual tour, to give you a report. When we have bought packaged bus tours (say, Toledo from Madrid), we have tried to find tours with no lunch payment included. Then at the lunch restaurant, we ask the guide what time we need to be back at the restaurant, and then tour on our own for an hour or so. We buy a premade, un-refrigerated sandwich from a display case at a street-front convenience store, typically, and walk while eating it. This makes the most, of a very rushed, regimented day. Of course, it assumes that the restaurant is "downtown" somewhere interesting, and not a "highway rest stop."

Kim, thanks!

I would need a tour just to make things easier as I won’t have a car, but the train makes a lot of sense - cutting down much of the travel time

This one looks good, too

It’s not ideal, but I think a taste is better than none at all…and they can customize the tour to my needs

https://www.riverloire.com/loire-valley-tours/loire-valley-day-tour

Thank you!!!

Tim,

I found this company that was recommended on another site that gets great reviews. They’ll pick you up pretty much anywhere you want -Kim suggested St Pierre de Corps, and that’s one of their pick ups.

It’s not ideal - but I don’t know when I’m getting back to Europe, to be honest….and I think as long as I don’t push it, it could be fine. I wouldn’t do more than 2 chateaux. In this sample day tour, we see Chenonceau & Amboise, plus Close Luce…but if I wanted to do another Chateau instead of, say, Amboise, that would be fine.

For me, I’m more interested in food than wine… I think I’m leaning towards Villandry if I add one more

https://www.riverloire.com/loire-valley-tours/loire-valley-day-tour

Thank you so much!!!

I was in Amboise and surrounding area two months ago after having done a lot of research!

Betsy - are you traveling solo or with at least one other person? I ask because some tour companies require 2 or more to run a tour. For instance, here are the policies of one of the companies that I attempted to use. I was hoping for "join-in" tour. https://www.accodispo-tours.com/selling-conditions.html

It seems if a traveler is ready to book a "private tour" that those can be made for a single person, but I wasn't willing to spend the necessary money. (I managed on my own - public transport - to get to the chateaux I was interested in.) If you are traveling solo, I suggest checking with any tour company you book with as to whether they have a minimum participant policy. I have had booked tours canceled last minute more than once as a solo traveler.

That said, I have talked with people who took an early train from Paris to Tours and picked up an Acco Disco Tour (company linked above), then returned to Paris on an evening train. Perhaps that is an option rather than a coach tour from Paris.

I think your time may be limited if you try to DIY with public transport in a day trip from Paris. I've linked a post of mine below describing how I managed transport - but this was from Amboise, not Paris. The train schedules for visiting Chenonceaux and Chambord are reasonably limited. Hard enough from Amboise or Tours with only one or two train time options, I would have found it very hard from Paris.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/brittany-and-loire-itinerary

As far as lunch in Amboise, there are a number of cafes. I'm like the poster above and would prefer to grab or bring a sandwich rather than sit in a restaurant if I felt my time was limited. I don't know the typical turn-around time.

Betsy, is this your first trip to Europe? I ask, in this case, because of the good advice just above about spending/wasting TWO HOURS having an exquisite SLOW FOOD lunch in a major foodie country! It is very hard to get out of even a mediocre sit-down meal in France in less than two hours.

Did you see this note for the second tour company?

a typical day tour will start at € 190,00 per person on a basis of 4 persons.

It's also a "different" risk to make your own train trip to meet a local tour in Tours or St. Pierre des Corps. What if there is an abandoned bag on the Paris train platform and the police close down the station for 40 minutes? (That happened to us at CDG, when we were going immediately to Strasbourg from transatlantic arrival.) BTW, have you learned how to exercise the SNCF website (and OuiGo) to see how many trains go to Tours, and how many to St. P de C, or require a shuttle to do the last mile?

https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips

We liked Villandry a lot, but it's worth noting that it is WEST of Tours, while most of the big targets are EAST of Tours. These are non-controlled access roads, which are very busy during the tourist high season. I can't imagine ginning up Goat Farm Tours and Wine Tastings when you are paying a lot of money and spending a lot of travel time to see things (castles with reputations ... ) that can only be seen during daylight hours on one day, for you. In fairness, this is a matter of personal travel style. But I would still ask, have you punched up each of these castles on Goodle Maps and gotten the Auto travel time between them?

I've visited Goat Farms in Vermont, and tasted wine all over the world, but also in Parisian wine shops. Are they promising a visit to a working winery, or just a "wine tasting?"

This newsboard is full of Independent Travelers, so I'm not, remotely, criticizing your own hard work to plan a successful trip. I'm only worried about (possible ???) lack of experience in doing this.

Hi Betsy, this tour may be an option. This was during my 2019 trip in that area.

Update: that is still an option. But, if you’re taking the 1-hour train from Paris, you need to leave by 7am at the latest on the train.

”I had reserved a chateau tour with Acco-Dispo, but they needed more participants, so I switched to a tour with A La Francaise. For this tour, a couple from Ireland & I went to see the outstanding gardens at Villandry. Our guide walked us through the chateau to see the rooms and see the garden views. Afterwards, she provided a relaxing picnic on the grounds of Chateau L'Iselette. The first tour I had planned to take was going to be intense, covering four chateaus during an entire day. This half-day tour turned out to be the opposite - very relaxing, and I really enjoyed the chance to relax in the country setting and hear much more about living in France from our young guide. Villandry had been my top priority, and we had plenty of time there to enjoy the setting, arriving before it was crowded. (I had seen some of the other chateaus years ago.)”