Vaux le vicomte

"Rick doesn't recommend it"Actually, Rick has several pages on VLV in his Paris book (as a day trip from Paris), he says things like it's a joy to tour and that it offers a more intimate interior and a better sense of 17th-century chateaux life than Versailles. It's a bit more difficult to get to than Versailles, Rick explains the transportation options in his book.

Amy, a french friend kindly sent me a package of brochures on it,, all unfortunately in french, but, from what I could decipher, it definately looks lovely, and it seems to have some sort of candlelight evening tour thing going on too.

You should google it , all these sites have webpages, and they mostly all have a little flag you can click on to translate to english.

You could also consider Chantilly.

Vaux le Compte is definitely worth a visit and can be combined with seeing Fountainbleau. There is a shuttle between the two during the summer--not sure of the times but the shuttle no longer runs after early October. We saw both places in mid October a few years ago and ended up taking a taxi to VLC from Fountainbleau. Expensive, but worth it. Then we had to taxi back to train station in Melun. Seeing both places and train time took the better part of a day.