Hi,
I wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations of place to stop along the drive from Mt St. Michel to Amboise/Tours area. We are departing in the AM and plan to stay on in Amboise to visit chateau for the next several days. Would ideally be able to stop at a vineyard for lunch if possible.
Thanks,
As you're driving south from MSM towards the Amboise/Tours area, the wine regions don't start until you're about even with a west-east line drawn through Angers. There's one east of Angers a number of miles. This will make more sense if you're looking at a map that shows the wine regions in that area.
I was curious so I looked up that drive on rome2rio, it doesn't show the time for cars but shows that this trip is 6+ hours by train. So you may not have much, if any, time to stop along the way unless you're OK with getting into Amboise quite late.
Thanks,
When I look at a route planner the options for driving are between 3 and half and 4 and half hours, we would be leaving in the early morning as we have to check out of our hotel and will have been visiting Normandy area for several days.
I'm not surprised that driving is faster than train on this particular route, although some train connections can be "as quick as" 5hr 16 min.
Will you visit Fougeres in Brittany? Makes a lovely stop, but it comes only shortly after your morning departure from Mont St-Michel.
These distances are longer than you might think, if you're just eye-balling a small map.
Specifically what you want to understand is where the wine areas are located, in relation to your route. Because the wine areas aren't all along the route, they're in specific areas.
If you provide more specifics of what kind of wine areas you're looking for, I could probably be more specific in my recommendations.
There's also some things I could tell you about how to do a wine-tasting in France. It's not quite the informal, easy kind of thing that it is in Napa Valley or Willamette Valley. Send me a PM if you'd like to.
If you're leaving early enough you can get to Saumur in time for a late lunch and visit to a winery or champagne cave and then continue on to Amboise. From Mt St Michel to Saumur is probably about 4 hours drive time (maybe a bit more), from there to Amboise is about 1-2 hours depending on road conditions and traffic. Saumur itself is a very nice town on the Loire River. Try the Langlois Chateau winery or the Cellars Ackerman. It's been a lot of years but we stayed there for one night and I really liked the area.
Kent--I'd appreciate your comments on how wine tastings work in France, and how they differ from those in California. We have enjoyed visiting wineries all over our state, and are planning on driving and visiting wineries in the Cote du Rhone early July.
