Another beautiful sunny day to explore the fairytale chateaus of the Loire Valley! After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and started our road trip to explore more chateaus along the way to our next stay at Château Le Prieuré – La Maison Younan near the town of Saumur. The first chateau we visited in the morning when it opens was Château de Chaumont (offically name: Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire) at 10 AM (later than other castles so gave us plenty of time to have breakfast and go). This chateau has a massive garden, I should say a magical garden. It is decorated with fixtures and figurines that look like out of a storybook!

Those “mushrooms” were made out of plastic; they looked like glass from a distance.

They really create art out of plastic bottles!

Many different species of plants that I have never seen before:

This setup reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, don’t you think? The kids were having fun pretending 😀

They enjoyed going through tunnels and miniature houses like this one:

This bridge looked like it was hanging but it was on the ground so very safe and sturdy:

We walked for like half an hour and still on-going so instead of going deeper into the woods, we turned back and tried to find our way to the chateau! We found a “room” in the garden:

We finally found our way out of the garden, phew! The path to the chateau is lined with flowers:

Yay, there is the chateau!!! Chaumont had a close tie to Chenonceau! Chaumont was once owned by Queen Catherine de Medici and she asked her husband’s (Henry II) mistress to exchange it for Chenonceau after Henry’s death.

We had seen chateau in a massive hunting ground (Chambord), built on a river (Chenonceau), in the middle of a town (Cheverny), and now Chaumont on the cliff of a hill!

My son was copying my daughter’s dance moves LOL! Yup, they can’t stand still for photos!

We crossed a bridge to enter the chateau and interior furnishings looked more like a medieval castle. The small beds as like other European castles:

The wood carving of the furniture stands out in this chateau:

A really cute castle themed stained glass:

There is also a chapel in this chateau but its decorations are very different:

The massive room looked like for important meetings:

An office:

Staircase up to the top level:

It looked like storage rooms up here:

And an art gallery:

Then, we went back down the stairs to the dining room:

A pool table:

The music room?

Then, we headed out to the courtyard:

You can see the Loire River underneath the hill of the chateau:

A well?

After the chateau visit, we walked to the horse stable which is located on another building:

The up-side-down elephant:

Horse carriages:

Even in the stable, it has an art display:

This flower is huge, bigger than my palm!

After Château de Chaumont, it was time for lunch so I searched for Asian restaurants along the way to Amboise. I found Khmer Wok right across the Loire River from Chaumont. We parked behind the church and found out there were some parking right in front of the restaurant tucked in a corner.

A very quiet village center:

We ordered the homemade dumplings as appetizers, and they were quite good!

Jasom and I ordered the beef Lok Lak rice bowl, it was flavorful and inexpensive €12.90:

We ordered the pineapple chicken rice bowl for the kids; the chicken was at least tender.

Our descent lunch cost $63.84. After filling our bellies, we drove to Amboise, one of the major towns in the Loire Valley so it was more busy. Finding parking along the riverbank was not bad. We parked there and walked in to the town center where its chateau, Château Royal d’Amboise is located.

There are souvenir shops and restaurants in the lively town.

A long staircase up to the entrance of the chateau to burn some calories:

There it is!

As with all the chateaus, there is a chapel:

The cravings on the entrance side of the chapel was absolutely stunning, look at the details!!!

Up at the chateau gives an awesome view of the town below:

Let’s go inside! The kids love the colorful book inside the chateau:

A dragon and a crown, those usually the symbols of a castle 😀

The ground floor has a huge empty room:

The second floor has rooms like a medieval castle:

Then, more furnished rooms in red wallpaper and curtains:

Better views from the top floor:

Its garden on the backside:

The way exiting the chateau was this “tunnel” circling the tower:

This side of the chateau from the garden looked more picturesque!

There are photo frames in the garden for photos:

We went back to the entrance side for a family photo sitting on the bench.

We spent an hour or so up at the chateau and then headed down for some souvenir shopping where we bought Chambord cookies; we liked the raspberry kind as it is not too sweet.

The store signs were very cute:

A “window” shop hahaha:

My daughter bought an artcraft set from one of the souvenir stores.

Once we are done shopping, we continue our way to the hotel – Château Le Prieuré – La Maison Younan which was 1.5 hr away from Amboise. My daughter picked this hotel when I showed her photos of the choices, she loves the red room, she said it looked fancy LOL. The hotel is close to the town of Saumur but the drive up there is very narrow and steep!!! Thanks to my husband’s excellent driving skill, we made it up safely. I checked in and the receptionist showed me the room – it was on the very top floor (3rd floor) of the castle and no elevator xD We carried our luggage up, it was quite an exercise!

The room was hot as there was no AC, only fans. It was okay at night when the valley cooled down. The entrance of the room has this table that it took some skills to figure out how to open it 😛

Next is the living room which has a sofa bed to fit our family:

The bedroom with a king bed:

The bathroom was small and old, hum…how come I forgot to take a photo of it? The other issue with the room was that it has lots of spider webs and long-legged spiders!!!! I went downstairs to the reception to ask for help to clear them. She said the guy who works in the night shift can clean them; they only have bug sprays for now, urg! Alright, we’ll head out to dinner and deal with that later….

Asian restaurant in Saumur is limited….there is only one right outside the town across the bridge: La Muraille de Chine. it has parking in front of the restaurant so it wasn’t an issue. The owner is Chinese-Mandarin but even she said don’t expect authentic Chinese food because they have been living in France for over 30 years! We ordered a tofu dish for the kids, it was like Chinese take-out quality but not bad.

A glass noodle claypot with vegetables, it was a little bit spicy so not for the kids.

The sizzling beef was too salty 🙁

The price aligned with its quality – $64.99. Nevertheless, we much prefer this than French cuisine. After dinner, we drove back to the hotel to rest. The night shift guy came to our room and cleared out the spider webs! We were tired after another day of exploring the chateaus so the kids fell asleep quickly 🙂

Overall, Château de Chaumont and Château Royal d’Amboise were worthwhile to visit. Both are different, picturesque, and offer different scenery. We enjoyed both and our time souvenir shopping in Amboise.