Loire base recommendations please

You should make your Loire Valley base at the towns of Amboise or Blois. They are both located near the chateaux and you can rent a car in Amboise to drive around the region.

A friend and I loved staying in Chinon. Lovely location with its castle overlooking the town and short drives to the chateaux. Great restaurants, reasonably priced hotels and free public parking.

We stayed in Chenonceaux at La roserie Hotel. From there, it was an easy walk to Chenonceau which IMHO is the best of the chateaux. Chenonceaux is a small village with a couple of good restaurants It is about 12 miles from Amboise where you can rent a car.

As the previous poster mentioned, Chinon is also a nice base and less touristy. If you do choose Chinon, you might find this hotel appealing for your stay. I spent 3 nights there and the service is excellent.

http://hoteldiderot.com/en/rooms/

We were just there in mid October and rented an Airbnb in Amboise for three nights. There were six of us and it had three lovely bedrooms. We rented a car and traveled around the entire Loire area, stopping at three chateaux and many wineries. We ventured to Chinon one day and found it to be nice as well. You may find splitting your time between Amboise and Chinon will be helpful to cover the region. Amboise has many nice restaurants, plus the Clos de Luce and the chateaux. Good shopping.

I will agree with Lynda that you might want to consider splitting your time between Amboise and somewhere further west, if you want to reduce your daily driving times. We took the TGV direct from Paris to St Pierre des Corps in Tours and rented our car there before driving the 30 min to Amboise. We only stayed 4 nights, and didn't have time to explore the more westerly part of the valley. We found the driving to be very easy, just using Google maps and our GPS. Be sure to know your rental agency's open hours. Many are closed on Sunday, or have reduced hours. Similarly, gas up on Saturday if you need to, since some gas stations will be closed Sun.

Pick a handful of chateaux you want to visit, then pick something convenient to their. Limit your visit to just a handful, after that it's probably overkill.

I originally thought Amboise and Blois would be good bases but scaled back the number of chateaux and decided Amboise was best. I was happy with the choice. I haven't visited Blois so can't give you an opinion. I wouldn't recommend Tours, it's bigger with much more traffic. Amboise has plenty of restaurants but it's a small town.

I did stay a night in Chinon on my way in from Brittany. It was a nice change of pace, the nearby Abbey, Fortress and town are much older.

I would suggest 2 different places, but I'm not sure Amboise and Blois would be the best pair, although they're both nice places to stay. They're so close to each other that I'm not sure you'd gain the ability to see a lot more by moving from one to the other. Rather than staying in Amboise in addition to Blois, you could stay a little further west in Chinon, or even a little further west in Saumur. That would make it easier to see more of the region w/o doing too much driving each day.

Amboise and Chinon would be good choices, about half the time at each. Chateaux and other attractions are clustered east and west of Tours, so it makes sense to split that much time between those areas. I like the chateau at Blois very much but Blois is a bigger town with more traffic than nearby Amboise so perhaps not as good as a base.

It's true that you can get chateau'ed out after a steady diet. Vary your fare with wineries, villages, troglodyte caves, and if you like the Zoo-Parc Beyval near St-Aignan, reportedly one of Europe's best zoos. We spent most of a fun day there after too many chateaux.

I tihnk there's a fast train direct from CDG to St-Pierre-des-Corps, near Tours, where you could rent the car.

We stayed in Amboise and our hotel was the Hotel le Manior les Minimes. We had a rental car and drove to the gardens of Villandry and the chateaus in the area. We LOVED the hotel....and older elegant home that has been turned into a hotel. We thought the location was perfect....and loved coming back home each to the charming town of Amboise......lots of restaurants, bakeries and streets to walk down and enjoy.

I’ve based twice in Onzain ( halfway between Blois and Amboise ). I also based in Azay and would consider Chinon.