We came to the Loire Valley to see châteaus, so today we picked two of them to go visit. Yesterday’s tour of Chenonceau was so amazing that it seemed like it would be a hard act to follow, and it turned out it was. Our first stop today was at Château Chambord, which was huge and magnificent, but somehow didn’t have as much charm. It had one feature that I loved, though: the giant central staircase is a double-helix. In other words, it’s kind of DNA-shaped... it’s like two staircases entwined together.
Our other stop to Château d’Usse was a little disappointing. We read a review that said it’s a charming “story-book castle”, and the design is indeed beautiful but we discovered that it’s also dilapidated and cheesy. We think that may be partly because it’s run by a private individual instead of the government. And part of the problem is that we’re just spoiled by Chenonceau. Oh well, regardless of all that we got some good-looking pictures of it.