A Loire Valley Road Trip Across France Next Week

In a few days I’ll get on a plane to Paris and then spend a week touring through many of the famous vineyards of the Loire Valley.  As with all of my trips, as the day comes nearer I get more and more excited, anticipating that wonderful feeling of walking down the terminal waiting to board a plane.

My hosts in Paris extended a welcome by asking me to pick what I wanted to do while I was there for three days.  I chose to take a cooking course, take a bicycle tour of the city, and go see some jazz playing at a festival held during my time in Paris.

On Sunday I’ll take a train from Montparnasse to Nantes, near the Atlantic coast, and pick up a rental car. Then my trip will follow the famous Loire river as I stop by and meet wine makers and taste their wares.  HERE IS THE ROUTE I WILL FOLLOW

My journey is being sponsored by France Wine Travels, a group that promotes travel to France’s best wine regions. I’ll be posting to Facebook, Instagram, this blog and other outlets. For this they have equipped me with a French cellphone…so I can put up all kinds of posts all along the way.

Though there are times the trip will be a bit of a slog, with different hotels every night and a lot of miles to drive by myself, I know that I’ll be singing happy songs many times during the journey. It’s France, by God, and it’s my favorite country.  I can’t wait to take off! I’ll be spending one of the nights in the city of Tours, where in 2008, I enjoyed staying in my own little apartment with a kitchen.  That way I finally got to cook the food I found in the markets.