Loire Valley Wrap-up

Overall, we're pretty happy with this trip - the Loire Valley is known for its huge number of chateaux (aka castles). We definitely had to visit a few, but we didn't want the entire time spent getting numb with castle-fatigue! We discovered that the area itself is beautiful! It's full of forests, farmland, and rivers. It has a thriving wine industry (we found a new favorite white). The weather is pleasant. And apparently the music festival (June 21 all over France) is *extremely* popular! Crowded even. (we had to give up on that plan...)

Getting home was an adventure... We drove it all in one go, mostly on autoroutes (aka freeways). Google maps decided to have a little fun with us 🙄. First, it wanted us to drive way out of our way, sticking with the freeway long past when we should have turned off (it did this to us once before, returning from the Millau viaduct, so I was prepared for that. Then, it wanted us to get on the freeway at Tours, then get off, cut through town, get back on... Well, I was able to force some directions that kept us on a nice freeway exchange, but I couldn't set it like that on the day. OK - I figured we drive the easy route, ignoring the directions, until it could catch up. But even then, it sent us in the opposite direction! Here's a perfectly good half-cloverleaf, but it says to turn off, then U-turn, then get back on going the right way. Unbelievable, the mess! Well, anyway - the drive was mostly pleasant and low key 🙂.

A fun item - one department (aka county) we drove through is bounded by the Loir river and the Cher river, giving it the name "Le Loir et Cher" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loir-et-Cher). When you say this out loud, it sounds like "le loir est cher," meaning that the place is expensive! (If all you thought about were the chateaux, you could believe it!) 😜

One of our rest stops was at the overlook of the Eiffel Viaduct - yes, the same Eiffel of Tower fame also built bridges! You can definitely see the same hand here

This aire (aka rest stop) is one that can be accessed from either direction of the freeway - I'm glad we got to see it!

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Our total driving for the trip was 1800 km (1120 miles), quite a lot! 

We kept a pretty good gas efficiency, at 5.3 l/100km (44 mpg).

If I had paid just a *little* more attention to the speed limits, we probably would have had better gas mileage. And, I wouldn't have come home to a love note from the traffic guys - a 45€ speeding ticket from our very first day! 

See all the photos in the Loire Valley 2023 album.