https://www.chambord.org/en/After attending the World War One Centennial commemorations, we joined our Viking River cruise in Paris where we had one overnight at the Hôtel Ampère. The first part of the Viking package was a pre-cruise tour of the famous chateau's of the Loire Valley. We stayed 2-nights at the beautiful Clarion Hotel Château Belmont in the city of Tours. During the 2-days we toured two stunning chateaus; the Château Chambord and the Château de Chenonceau. We also had walking tours of Tours (tour of Tours!), Orléans, and the small towns of Amboise and Poitiers. Poitiers had a bustling farmers market which was fun to explore and a beautiful 12th Century church.

On the 3rd day we joined our ship, the Viking Forseti in Bordeaux for our 8-day cruise of the famous wine country along the Garonne and Dordogne Rivers.

At the end of the cruise, we took the short flight to Paris and stayed there on our own for a couple of days of sightseeing before we returned home. In all this trip was one of our longest so far at 21-days. We met some wonderful people, learned quite a bit about WW1, had some emotional moments standing in the foot steps of my grandfather and all those who fought, saw some amazing places and had fantastic food and wine (it's France after all!).

Tour of Loire Valley Chateaus