After leaving Mont Saint-Michel, we drove east towards the very heart of France. The Loire Valley is know as the Château region of France where thousands of Châteaus can be found. It was hard to choose which one to visit! We finally settled on Château de Chenonceau because we liked how it was built over a river.

I mean….look at it?!?

From Rick Steves:

“Château de Chenonceau is a 16th-century Renaissance palace arching elegantly over the Cher River. Nicknamed the “château of the ladies,” it was the home — and work — of many famous women over the centuries. Most of the design decisions for the main building were made by the wife of the original owner, as he was so often away on the king’s business. A later resident, King Henry II’s mistress Diane de Poitiers, added a bridge across the river to access the hunting grounds. Diane enjoyed her lovely retreat until Henry was killed (pierced in a jousting tournament) and his vengeful wife, Catherine de Médici, unceremoniously kicked Diane out into the nearby château of Chaumont. Catherine added new gardens and rooms to the palace, including the three-story structure atop Diane’s bridge that has ever since given Chenonceau its unique river-spanning charm. Catherine died before completing her full vision, but not before turning her château into the local aristocracy’s the place to see and be seen.”

The grounds are so grand and the history is so rich.

The kids loved the hedge maze, and all the gardens.

We enjoyed lunch beside the moat and had really good weather. My only complaint is that the coffees are tiny.

Diane de Poitiers garden was so beautiful and a great place for the kids to spin and play before going inside the Château.

You can also rent boats to take on the river during the summer months!

We had tickets to tour the inside of the Château after lunch.

The interior was so interesting and beautiful. We all liked the servant areas best, especially the kitchen where they would unload food shipments directly from boats on the river.

After the tour we enjoyed the rest of the gardens.

They were all so beautiful and different from each other.

We really loved the flower and vegetable gardens.

But we particularly loved the Donkey Park as we were leaving for the day.

After exploring most of the day we were very happy to get back to the RV, relax and drive to our next destination, the Gouffre de Padirac.

We only had about half a day in Paris before picking up our RV and heading out on our road trip. We decided the best thing to do with our time was to return to the Eiffel tower and try to get all the way to the top.

Emmy was very excited to start our day at a little cafe big fans of Pain au chocolat. Our hotel was near the Eiffel Tower so we got there nice and early.

We had planned on taking the stairs to the second platform, then taking the elevator to the summit. We didn’t know that two legs of the tower offer access to the stairs and two have access to the elevator all the way. When we got to the front of the line they told us we had to go get into another line to climb but could get tickets in the elevators all the way to the top. We didn’t want to wait in another line and possibly miss getting tickets to the summit so we happily took the elevator.

The views are just incredible from every level.

Waiting in line to get to the summit isn’t bad when we had these views.

The summit was incredible, they sell champagne and macarons so it’s fun to see people celebrating all different occasions.

After our time at the top we took the elevator back down to the first platform where we had lunch.

When we were done we walked around the Champ de Mars and found a cute little Carousel of the Eiffel Tower.

Too soon we had to gather our luggage from the hotel and catch an Uber to pick up our RV. We were able to adjust pretty well to the time change by staying up late on our first night in France.

We got our RV and on the road in the afternoon, it was fun to be in the same model as the one we rented in Germany in 2019.

We recommend Indie Campers if you need a rental abroad or in the US. We are already thinking about renting a van for a UK trip soon!

We spent most of our “day” flying into London then catching another short flight to Paris.

For the first leg of our flight we had four seats together across the middle and it was so nice to be able snuggle together and try to get some sleep. The kids did pretty well but they definitely didn’t get as much sleep as they usually do.

Our flight from Denver to London was almost two hours late leaving so that made our layover time in London much shorter than we would have liked.

Here we are on the train to a different concourse of Heathrow Airport trying very hard to make our flight to Paris. We made it with very little time to spare.

Once we got into Paris we grabbed a Taxis from the Airport to our hotel in Paris. It was late afternoon and we were tired from our 20ish hours of travel but we wanted to see some of Paris and try to adjust to our new time zone before going to bed.

Our hotel was close to the Eiffel tower so walked to around took in the sights of the Champ de Mars. We grabbed dinner at park venders, played on a playground and marveled at our first sights of the Eiffel Tower.

We stayed out until the lights turned on and it was even more beautiful than I expected.

We didn’t have time or the energy to go up the Eiffel tower that evening so we just enjoyed the sights before taking the train back to our hotel and crashing for the night.