If you want to go to a place like Chenonceau on a bright sunnny summer day, you'll do well to get there as early as possible. That's what I did in 2004, when we had an American friend of a friend visiting. She really wanted to see the Loire Valley's most glamorous château. We stopped there one afternoon when we were driving around. When I saw the fleet of tour buses and the crowd of tourists standing in line to buy tickets, I told our visitor I couldn't go through with it.
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If the lines were that long and the buses that numerous, the château would be a mob scene. I told her I would make her a deal: if we just drove on that afternoon, we would get up early the next morning and drive to Chenonceau so as to arrive at 9 a.m. Chenonceau is less that 30 minutes from our house by car. The tour buses don't start arriving until 10:30 or 11:00, after the passengers have had breakfast. So that's what we did, and you see the result. No crowds in my photos. No shuffling along, cheek by jowl, to try to get glimpses of what makes Chenonceau so beautiful.
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We were lucky with the weather. In this climate, summer morning are often warm and still. Summer afternoons can be hot and humid. Warm and still mornings make for good reflections in the waters of the Cher river, which the Chateau de Chenonceau spans.
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In the photo below, you can see clearly how Chenonceau castle is really two separate buildings. And then there's the wing that was built on a bridge over the river.