Superb apartment in the Castle - Castles of the Loire

This place is fun - just what we were seeking for a family holiday. The chance to stay in a real chateau. It's just an apartment, and not the whole chateau, and we didn't have a butler or servants (in fact the apartment probably used to be the kitchens or servant's quarters) but there is a genuine moat, swans and the eclectic collection of furniture and collectibles, tapestries and antiques gives this place real charm.

Kitchen is tiny, and while there is a big dining table, cooking is not easy, so eating out may be desirable. Still we managed to whip up some super dinners and thoroughly enjoyed immersing ourselves in chateau-land.

For the price of a standard hotel room in Paris, we drove to the countryside for a few nights and stayed in a 3 bedroom chateau / castle apartment and toured other nearby castles like Chambord as well as the city of Orleans and some smaller towns. The ideal season here would be spring to fall so you can spend more time on the property grounds in warmer weather. A nearby grocery store allowed us to get all food and wine items we needed but you would want to plan for meals at restaurants and cafe's and a car is necessary. The property is historic and very impressive but you won't be able to enter or wander inside the chateau except for your apartment. See are happy we stayed here to get out of Paris for a few nights and can say we stayed in a castle.

Great location close to some lovely chateaus. We arrived at 4pm to find the owner had sent an email advising we could not access the property to 6pm. As we had been travelling all day this message was not received until we had arrived.

The apartment is as described but we found the furnishings overdone with items of decoration. There was no instruction booklet but rather a 1 page list of do nots concerning the overall chateau. Good WIFI. Poorly designed lounge area with the lounge facing away from the television and facing the billiard table, The billiard table was positioned in front of the television - quite strange. Bed was comfortable and hot water was great The apartment is at moat level so no view of the chateau or the lovely garden surrounds. Very nice grounds to wander through.

Supermarkets were close by. Overall between 3 and 4 stars but an interesting experience none the less.

Arkadi is an awesome host who took great care to make sure we made it into the chateau and understood how everything worked. If you want to feel like you have stepped back in time, get some relaxation and feel like you’ve stepped back to the 14th century (with modern amenities) stay here. We could not have been happier. If you stay on a weekend, make sure you hit up the grocery store before Sunday, because it is closed. I wouldn’t try to go crazy with cooking something extravagant, but the kitchen is very sufficient for warming up meals and preparing charcuterie, making coffee, etc. EXCELLENT hot water. The grounds are also stunning and we spent a lot of time resting in the orchard. Thank you for having us Arkadi!

The chateaux is fabulous, we were a little disappointed to have no area dedicated for us to sit out, however we did sit out in the general gardens. Our only complaint was that the advert said against pool/spa communal pool, there is no pool onsite and the owner told us that the there was one in a village 10 miles away I think this needs to be clarified as I would probably not have booked if I had realised as we had hoped to have this part of our holiday as a relaxing by the pool part.