Tours vs Amboise (with a car)

I'm firmly in the Amboise better stay than Tours camp. You certainly don't need to leave Amboise to get a good meal.

But if you want to, and you want to take the train, it's not a big deal. It's maybe a
600 meter walk? And there are taxis around too.

Have fun!

I would 100% stay in Amboise and walk to and from dinner

I'd prefer Tours, but Amboise is ok.

Thanks to certain travel writers Amboise is often packed over-full of people. If you don't book early for dinner you will find yourself eating somewhere decidedly sub-par, something Amboise specialises in.

Tours has dozens of good restaurants you can walk to, Amboise has a couple.

Any restaurant suggestions?

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/dinner-in-amboise

I’ve stayed in both and they were both fine, Amboise in 2014 and Tours in 2022. I think Tours has more dining options and people are a bit more spread out. We stayed in the old town area on a pedestrian street. Our airbnb included parking a few blocks away, which was fine. In Amboise we had to find street parking.

To me, the most important thing is to have parking, and you say that your current reservation has that. You should reckon with the huge tourism load at the end of June; local travel will be often with substantial traffic, and you will be parking in overflow grassy-meadow parking lots up to 1/4 mile from the Chateau entrances.

I do not mean to make this decision for you, but you might think about just how encyclopedic (something I'm often guilty of!) you intend the three Loire days to be. Because we were going clockwise by car from Tours (St. Pierre des Corps) TGV station and eventually to Normandy, we made the (questionable, but not regretted) decision to only see chateaux in the Tours area and west. We still had more than we could do, from our chateau/hotel in Chinon. You might also consider whether you need advance sold-out tickets to "candlelight nights" or "Son Et Lumiere" nights.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/normandy-brittany-thoughts

(Despite the title, this link includes our Loire itinerary.)

@Tim Thank you so much. I know we won't see everything. I have this bad habit of trying to see lots of things on one trip, and am also afraid this part of the trip may be a little bit sleepy for my son, who is a great traveler, but is mostly accustomed to major European cities. I am a BIG advance planner, for sites/restaurants both and very often do advance tickets. We only have about 2.5 days in the Loire Valley and are likely to do only two or three major chateaux, probably Chambord and Clemenceau. I'd like to get a wine tour in, but only if it is a half day and if I can get to and from without driving. Obviously, the car will be useful for getting to places that are harder to get to by public transportation, but the main reason for the car is getting from main destination to main destination without TGV routes. I really want to drive as little as possible, as I HATE driving on vacation, and I have never driven outside of North America before.

We are doing Paris - immediately on a high speed train to Bayeux, renting a car there and staying for a few days, onto Saint Malo/Brittany for a few days, a night at MSM, then Loire, then driving to see the battlefield where Caesar conquered Gaul, driving onto Dijon, where we will walk around and leave the car, then TGV to Lyon, then TGV to Paris.

(I realized way too late after booking hotels and tour guides, etc., that it would have been better to stay in Paris first and not have that horrible first travel day, and also put an extra ten days between us and the Olympics, but it is too late now, and it actually would have lost us time in the end, as I would have felt compelled to get to Paris the night before we left anyway, just in case.)

We have some restaurant recommendations for Amboise. Some of the best meals of our trip were in Amboise last May. We had a dinner reservation for Le Parvis which was made by our hotel. We also had a delicious dinner at L'Ambacia and pizza at La Florentine one evening. It is helpful to make dinner reservations in advance. Lunch at Anne de Bretagne and lunch at La Reserve was also good. The Bigot Patisserie is nice for a takeout treat. Amorino gelato was also popular. These were all walkable from our hotel.

I agree that le Parvis is good. Anne de Bretagne is ok if you have 4 or 5 hours to spend waiting for your order to arrive, and L'Ambacia was a bit off last time we were there, which is interesting because all the previous times have been ok (reports from others say we're not the only ones to notice). The pizza places (of which there are many) are ok if you like pretty generic french style pizzas.

Our pick would be Chez Bruno (we've never had a poor meal there) and Les Arpents has a good reputation.

There are some restaurants in Amboise that I won't pass comment on (not bad per se, just bland and generic, and not value for money)