"Doug Anderson" wrote in message
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"tim....." writes:

"Doug Anderson" wrote in message
...
"tim....." writes:

18 months ago I asked for some help with visiting the Châteaux de
la Loire.

and I got advice about a dozen or so that I should visit.

I had intended on going immediately after I posted, but my plans
changed and I actually stopped off during a drive through to Spain to
visit a friend in October, giving me 4 days in the valley, based upon
staying in a hotel in Blois - when it p*ssed down every day :-(

As the number that you guys had indicated pretty much matched the
lists in guide books I though that this would be long enough to visit
them all.

But no, I hadn't done my research properly and when I got there I
picked up the leaflet from this web site
http://www.leschateauxdelaloire.org/ and there are 71 of them listed
(though not all are chateau) plus at least another 10 not subscribing
to that site.

So, I've just come back from a two week trip where I pretty much
blitzed the valley from one end to the other, though I still missed
out a few that don't open in June (or May, or September), or were
closed on the day(s) that I was in that specific area, so I still need
at least another week to finish them all :-).

Thanks for all you help guys.

I don't want to post a report as it will be pretty repetitive but if
the interested people are still here and want to have a discussion, we
can go that way.

But what I will say is that this trip didn't change my views on French
restaurants (in the region), the a-la-carte menus are flipping
expensive (basically you don't see any change from 50 Euro) and I
still couldn't find any menu de jour available in the evenings, though
one or two hotels did have buffet style offerings that were reasonably
priced, but that was too samey to have every day, so fast food it was
most days. So much for the home of Haute Cuisine!

Yikes. I have to say my experience of the same region is completely
different. But maybe I'm looking for something different than you.

It has been easy for me to find small pleasant restaurants with
decent prix fixe dinner menus at a sensible price.

Available in the evening?

Yes.

Or were they in the middle of nowhere?

Small pleasant restaurants with decent prixe fixe dinner menus are not
rare. One finds them in virtually any reasonably sized town, and
often in very small places too in tourist areas.

It seem unaccountable to me that you couldn't find such places.

I think you mentioned Blois. I type a search into tripadvisor and I
get 100 restaurants. I clicked on the third one as I have a vague
memory of eating there (but it may have been another restaurant in
another city with the same name) many years ago.

They have a website, which shows a prixe fixe menu at 16 Euros. Open
for dinner 7-11. http://aucoindtable.com/crbst_1.html. There seems
to be a large selecction of restaurants on the north bank of the river
near Pont Jacques Gabriel.

You could really never find such places?

Not by wandering the streets, no

As I have said (twice) all of those I saw offering fixed priced menus had a
lunchtime only rule, no doubt that if I had tried harder I might have found
one that didn't, but after the first 20 you kind of get the idea that it is
a lost cause.

tim