Loire Valley France – In this video, we’ll share insights into the geography of the Loire Valley in France including the best ways to get there, and top tips for navigating this stunning region including how to pick where to stay and the rules of the road in France; a detailed review of road signs, toll booth navigation, and parking information. Get ready to plan your dream trip to visit the top sites in the Loire Valley where you can tour the best castles in France until your heart is content
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Loire Valley Itinerary and 12 must see castles – https://youtu.be/b1bJRvPoiJ4
Chateau Chambord Short – https://youtu.be/gs3q1T7jOes
Viking River Cruises – Who are they for? – https://youtu.be/B_ZKWENK1xQ
Paris to Mont St. Michel in One Day – https://youtu.be/y8f5eGeDNhA
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#France #LoireValley #travel #tips
welcome to another just traveling through video I’m Celeste and I’m Terry and today we’re going to be giving you tips for visiting a lir valley the lir valley contains over 300 chat the chat range from practical fortified castles built in the 10th Century to Splendid residences built 500 years later the lir valley had been on our list of places to visit for a long time we bought a coffee table book some years ago that contain overhead views of the chat in the valley and ever since we bought that book we’ve been dying to go in addition to the chat you’ll be able to experience the culture the food and of course the wine of the region in this video we’re going to focus on the tips for visiting where it is getting around driving in the lir valley and then we’re going to do another video that’s focused purely on the castles that we saw while we were there yeah there are a lot of small details about France and especially by driving in France that you need to know before you ever get into your rental car so where is the lir valley it sits to the southwest of Paris 800 square km that stretches from angers to oron as mentioned before there’s over 300 Chate in the Lira Valley and the yellow icons on this map are showing you where some of the more famous ones are the purple icons show you where some of the wineries are in the valley there’s a huge number of them many more than we’re showing here as far as getting to the lir valley in our case we flew into London and then from London we took a a cheap flight on EasyJet to n which is just west of angers however most people are going to fly into Paris and then take a train we are big Advocates of the train system in France it’s very fast very efficient not too expensive and very comfortable for example taking the train from Paris to angers takes roughly an hour and a half and costs between 50 and $60 or you could take a train from Paris to oron it takes about hour and 20 minutes and it’s only $22 and oron is the closest major city in Lair Valley to Paris if you decide to start in tour you have to be careful because some of the trains are direct and some of them are not some of them actually go through oron the direct train takes about an hour and 14 minutes and cost around $45 depending on when there’s so much distance to cover in the lir valley that we do recommend renting a car once you get there or you could rent your car in Paris and drive to the L if you didn’t want to take a train yeah you’re going to need a rental car the chat are not lump close together they’re scattered about now how do you pick where you want to stay or where you want to start we stayed in three different places and it worked out well for us because that allowed us to never have to drive more than 100 km in any given direction we did our L tour from west to east we stayed in angers then in shanon chanon and then on to M as far as accommodations go there are a variety to choose from there are mostly small local hotels in the bigger cities like T and Amba you’ll find some European chains such as Ibis they don’t typically have any large American chains no you’re not going to see any large American chains out there in the valley at all in our case we used verbo to find rentals in the different locations sometimes we wanted to stay in a city or a village and then near M we actually stayed in the countryside in a transformed gate house that was part of a country estate we knew it had parking right out in front knowing what the parking situation is when you reserve a place is really important definitely because parking can be a serious challenge in these Villages so we always look for places with parking or that had somewhere to park nearby in Chino and outside of embo we stayed in the verbo and we’ll put the links to those places down below if you’re interested we recommends planning your days around seeing maybe two chatau and a winery you’re going to spend a minimum of 90 minutes at each Chateau they’re all quite large multiple floors large Estates there’s a lot to see and appreciate each one has its own character the history is fascinating so seeing just to a day seems to be a good balance yep in the lir valley eating times can be more restrictive than they are in the United States for example lunch was typically between 12 and 2 to 2:30 and if you were hungry before 12 or after 2:30 you weren’t going to be able to find lunch anywhere sometimes you might be able to find a Brasserie serving some light food when you walk in ask for un por and they will let you know if they’re serving food the same goes for dinner they open for dinner around 6:30 or 7: typically we got used to going oh it’s noon it’s we have to find somewhere to eat so we don’t miss the window many restaurants have the formula breakfast or lunch specials the breakfast usually consists of a coffee a pastry a bread or Jam many times fresh pressed squeezed orange juice and sometimes yogurt the formula lunches frequently have multiple courses including bread salad the main meal and a dessert wine or beer is common at lunch uh these formula options tend to be very good deals also realize that tipping is not required expected or common at all so the food in the lir valley is typical French food you’re going to find some things made with freshwater fish uh various chicken dishes pulo tea roasted chicken goat cheeses something called riette similar to Pate it’s got meat inside like pork or duck they always have Crepes Savory Crepes called gallette and dessert Crepes as well we had wonderful salads we had pizzas that were fantastic and don’t pass up the cafe gourmont Cafe gormand is a wonderful cup of coffee that comes with three to five small desserts you also might see a local specialty called tarte tarte A variation of apple tarts where apples are caramelized and sometimes dough cooked on top and if you’re really picky you could always just eat ice cream ice cream is really quite tasty the difference is that French ice cream is made with eggs so it’s thick and custardy whereas American ice cream is made with sugar milk and cream we found that it’d be very very tasty every village or city has a buery a Patisserie or many of those and you can always stop at one of those if you can’t find any other options the roads in France have different designations and it can be helpful to know what those are as you’re planning your route yeah any route that begins with an a is an auto route which will frequently be a toll road any road that you come across that starts with an N is considered to be a National Road and the most common Country Roads start with d a departmental Road yeah the departmental roads can be main roads between Villages but they can also be quite rural so these secondary departmental roads as they’re called uh may be more narrow and sometimes have worse conditions for the most part the roads are in excellent condition driving on roads in France are some things you should be aware of one of the major differences is no ride on red so if you pull up to a stoplight you cannot turn right on that red light so the second thing is the priority ad rule yeah which is subtly different than what we do here the people coming in from the right have the right away even if you’re already out there on the road unless otherwise posted unless otherwise posted so here are some of the road signs associated with priority yeah you’re going to see these all over the road system in France everywhere you go and it’s good to be aware of what they mean and what they don’t mean first one is priority is given to the primary route the second one there with the cross at the intersection ahead priority is given to the traffic coming from the right if you see this yellow diamond it means you have priority on the road so the priority dra doesn’t doesn’t apply and then you can see if you have the black line there it means it’s the end of your priority on the road yeah they they use that black line through a sign concept all over the place for example you know when you’re departing a town or Village they’ll do the same thing they they’ll let you know you’re leaving that area and roundabouts Vehicles entering the flow of traffic from the right get the right of way unless otherwise posted this this is one you should memorize because roundabouts are amazingly popular in France you’re going to find them everywhere they prefer them over stop signs and stop lights if you see something that says this gives priority of the drivers on the roundabout and it is shown by this triangular symbol with the circular arrows inside yeah and here are some of the road signs some of the more popular ones that may not always be as obvious yeah but you’re going to see them again everywhere in France and they’re useful and informative and good to know 30 km per hour zones are frequently in villages as you’re driving through very frequently uh the second one there is no overtaking so even if the road has a dotted line if there’s a sign saying no overtaking you’re not allowed to pass uh this next one confused us for a bit we we didn’t do our homework before we went and we’re like what are those signs and it’s basically telling you that when the road is too narrow you have to give priority to the oncoming vehicle okay so you can see the the Triangular sign with two arrows that’s two-way traffic and the one next to it is telling you that you have priority to go down that narrow road or one lane road at the bottom left you have the Motorway and the end of Motorway those are helpful if you’re getting onto a road the motorway sign will be there to tell you that it’s most likely an auto route um which can mean that it might have tolls so something to be aware of the next circular one is a speed limit sign and you’re going to see those everywhere the speed limit will vary sometimes it’ll be you know 50 60 70 80 90 km per hour and then when that zone ends they’ll put a a black line through it to indicate that particular speed limit is now removed so the next one being in French wouldn’t be obvious at all to people who don’t speak French so Alum vur means turn on your headlights and then last but not least the bumps in the road which you will find on some of the D class highways those are actually very frequent in The Villages that you Traverse because a lot of times there’s going to be some kind of bump or there’s going to be even sometimes they have things that jut out into the road to get you to to slow down as you come into a village so a lot of The Villages have a 30 km per hour speed limit and these bumps sometimes are there to tell you hey slow down they’re fond of that they would they prefer those bumps and thing that protrudes into the lane they prefer those over any other kind of device toll roads are very popular in France yeah these these signs are are really important for you to understand the distinction because at every toll booth you’re going to see some or all of these in indicating what you should do so the the T symbol means Tage accepted and if you’re just visiting France you likely won’t have one of these they’re not giving them out normally on rental cars it’s mostly for local people I think you need a European bank account even I’m not sure but the rental car didn’t give us one so don’t go to one of the things that only has the Tage if it’s got the Green Arrow like the one on the bottom there that’s okay because that’s going to accept accept all forms of payment but just the t means you’re going to be in trouble so if it’s got a credit card symbol it means it’ll accept credit cards in that lane um your credit card must have a chip but not all chip cards are accepted we had frequent issues with American Express was not popular at all in France in that part of France so um we don’t recommend going through the credit card only one in just in case your cards don’t work and the o have cash as a backup just in case so if you look for that Green Arrow and go into that lane you’re going to be all set but just make sure you have some cash just in case when you stick your credit card in there it it says not accepted happened to us many times we were happy to have cash in the car don’t leave home without your change the little Villages that you visit in the lir valley are frequently going to have these parking meters so they’re called pay pay on it’ll say pay on on the ground yeah and uh having parking meters we mean there’s not a parking meter per slot there’s like one of these paymed machines for the entire lot the machines typically take cash or credit we used credit most of the time but there was a couple of times when we had to use cash follow the instructions on the machine and then get a ticket and put that ticket on your dashboard and that’s all we have on the L Valley for today we hope you enjoy we had a lot of fun putting it together and if you subscribe you’ll get a notification when we get our video together on the castles in the valley and that will be followed by a video about our trip to the duronia valley which will be as interesting as the chat thanks again thank you for watching cheers and don’t forget to [Music] subscribe oh
1 Comment
😊excellent tips, thank you