Chateau Chissay is one of several chateaus in France's Loire Valley to offer overnight accommodations to visitors.

Chateau Chissay's dining room awaits with fine china, crystal and starched tablecloths.

Both Johnny Depp and Mick Jagger keep chateaux in the Loire Valley, known as the garden of France for its mild climate, wildflower strewn roadsides, and solid place in French history. But except for a glimpse of Jagger’s manse from a hot air balloon, we writers didn’t see their places on my fall press trip. We amply contented ourselves instead with explorations of the chateaux where Leonardo da Vinci spent his final years, where the 16th century rivalry between Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers played out and where the Renaissance bloomed.   Many of the 300 chateaux in the Loire Valley have been reinvented to showcase the past for modern visitors and it’s the experience of a lifetime to see them.
This part of France is just a little more than two hours by high speed train from the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris so is an easy-to-arrange destination for Americans.

A hillside strewn with wildflowers frames the chateau's swimming pool as seen from a stone patio where wine and cheese is served before dinner.

Quite a number of the still privately owned chateaux have been reconfigured to provide overnight lodging to visitors and it’s an experience quite unlike any other. We enjoyed two nights at chateaux - nights that went by all too quickly. It was dark when we arrived Chateau de Pray and bedtime for me at 10:30 when we’d finished a lovely meal there.


Departure was shortly after dawn so I didn’t even get the photos I’d wanted.
We arrived in late afternoon at Chateau de Chissay, which isn’t far from Chenonceau Chateau, the subject of the final story in my Loire series, which runs on Jan. 8. It was a charming finish for my last night in France, but I desperately wished for a longer stay. It's so often the downside for travel writers that so much must be covered that its impossible to spend time enough to soak in the ambiance at wonderful places. The photos here were taken at Chateau Chissay and you can see how delightful it is.
Much to my surprise, ancient  fabrics still are in place, antiques fill public areas and some guest rooms have working fireplaces. I fell in love with Chissay, which predates Christopher Columbus, and in modern times has hosted Charles de Gaulle and other notables meeting for strategizing during World War 2.
It’s likely that I had the very suite where deGaulle may have stayed, or at least I like to imagine that. But the chateau was completely renovated in 1986, so perhaps not.

Silk wallcoverings and a comfortable canopied bed with high thread-count linens characterize guest rooms at Chateau Chissay.

My room had silk wallcoverings, grandly vaulted ceilings and a huge canopy bed the equal of those we’d seen in royal chateaux. My bathtub had claw feet and handpainted tiles showing chapters in French history adorned the bathroom walls.
Tall stone framed windows looked out on the gardens and swimming pool below with frothy bathroom curtains catching the breezes from a forested area beyond. Fine linens draped the bed for my silky sleeping comfort .

A deep claw-foot tub allows a full submersion bath

It was no surprise to discover that rates in euros ranged from 135 to about 350 a night ($175 to $475 with meals) But   those lucky enough to stay there say it's   worth every penny.
Many of the chateaux offering overnight lodging are members of Bienvenue au Chateau, an organization designed to protect and enhance private chateaux, manors and historic houses in France with standards that guarantee a personal touch to paying guests. Click on the English flag at its website, www.bienvenueauchateau.com to view the accommodations by region and find out about them.
Each listing also indicates whether or not English is spoken.
Both of the chateaux where I stayed are closed for a time during winter but reopen in the spring when the Loire valley is arguably at its loveliest. I cannot imagine a more pleasant thing than using one of these places as headquarters for a meander among the villages and chateaux of the surrounding countryside.
  Learn about them at www.chateaudepray.fr and www.chateaudechissay.com

I learned lots from my group of international journalists while visiting France's Loire Valley in September. The ten of us, shown here after our wonderful hot-air balloon voyage, came from Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Moscow and America, by way of Berlin.
The next story in my series about the trip will run on Dec 11 and I hope you will read it.
I was the eldest of the group by probably 15 years.  That's me in the middle, wearing green.All but me had i-Phones and most of them logged on to do blogs each day. . Journalists are a curious bunch and we all asked a lot of questions, but since we were in each other's company at least 12 hours a day a dynamic of courtesy evolved among us.  I learned that people from Beijing and Hong Kong are very different and don't even speak the same language, although here in America we know both as Chinese. As a food writer, I know that the Chinese typically don't eat cheese so I asked them why. "We don't like the smell," replied Peng, shown in the yellow shirt in front of the group.

But our colleague Siu Ming Chan (standing, far right) from Hong Kong devoured the beautiful French cheeses we were offered, including those served for dessert. When I learned that Yoshiharu Fujiwari (far left) was born in Nagasaki just a few years after the city was bombed in World War 2,  I was curious about what life was like for him as a child. But after learning the bomb site is still a large, lifeless area that's off-limits more than 60 years later, I got the sense that further questions would not be welcomed.
Petite and pretty Xue Zhao, probably in her mid-20s and second from left above,  asked me to call her Snowflake when she discovered that I couldn't get my lips around her name. "I was born in a snow month," she said. "That's my nickname."
Whenever we crossed the street in busy Nantes, Snowflake would come to my side, and firmly take my arm in hers to cross the street. I quickly realized that she probably perceived me as elderly and the Chinese respect and revere their elders. I took no offense and found it delightful, but after a few days of watching me scale castle ramparts and jump in and out of a hot air balloon she stopped doing it.

 Chateau Chenonceau visitors look over some of the gardens originated in the 16th century by Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici as kayakers on the river over which the chateau  was built explore by water.

The gardens at the Royal Chateau Amboise  were designed in an English style with regularly placed and carefully manicured boxwoods as a focal point.

Ordinary wood boxes were stacked for shade and display of plants that need little water  in this biodiversity garden at the Chaumont-sur-Loire Chateau where each summer more than 30 gardens are created around a theme in an international competition among landscape architects and students.

The spires of Chaumont sur Loire Chateau are seen beyond one of the Gardens of the Future which competed in the April to October  2011 International Garden Festival. 

Walking on the grass is discouraged in gardens throughout France, which are instead criss-crossed by walking paths for enjoyment by garden lovers. 

This Garden of the Future at the Chaumont Chateau competition used meshing to replicate large mushrooms in its design

Chateaux where rivals Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici lived are just 12 miles apart in France’s verdant Loire Valley. Their lifetime rivalry over King Henry II of France played out at both of their homes and its many stories continue to fascinate today 's visitors to their  beautiful chateaux. Diane, 20 years the king’s senior, was his mistress while Catherine was his wife, marrying the young king when he was 15 and she was 14. Both Chateaux were owned by the King and he moved between them.
But many who visit care little for the Renaissance intrigues of the mid-1500s, coming instead to visit the gardens.
The hundreds of acres surrounding Chaumont are the scene each year for an international garden competition while the gardens of Chenonceau perfectly set the scene between sky and water. It’s unlikely that either Diane or Catherine ever actually got down on their knees to work in the soil, but both women were sources of ideas for armies of gardeners and landscape architects among their staff members.
Since 1992 the landscaped park around Chaumont has hosted the International Garden Festival from April to October. Thirty new gardens are created here by landscape artists each spring around a theme. When I was there in September I viewed several of the Gardens of the Future, which framed the theme of biodiveristy around new blooms, new materials and innovative ideas and approaches, some of which are seen here.
I wasn’t there at night, but if you go in summer you should be. From 10 p.m. to midnight the chateau itself is illuminated by 2,500 candles while part of the gardens are lit by electroluminescent diodes, their colors revealing strange and mysterious shapes and shadows of the plants.
Meanwhile, at Chenonceau the vast, 1,700-acre gardens of both Catherine and Diane, which flank each side of the chateau, also are illuminated on summer evenings. Visitors can stroll among them to musical accompaniment from Arcangelo Corelli, Italian master of classicism.
Those who take an i-Pod tour of the chateau’s rooms will certainly be smitten by the many fresh flowers on display. They change with the season and are designed with blooms grown in the gardens. Those who wish can visit the floral workshop in the courtyard of the 16th Century farm on the premises. This time of year, majestic fir trees brighten the tour, which is warmed by blazing fires in the chateau’s many fireplaces.
That chateau was built over the Cher River, a Loire tributary, and boat tours can also be arranged by those wishing to tour by boat. learn more at www.domaine-chaumont.fr and www chenonceau.com