Chateau de Chaumont-sur-Loire - Once a fortress, Chaumont-sur-Loire is a comfy castle that housed French nobles and the Queen of France, Catherine de' Medici. It's a great destination in summer for the "Festival du Jardin," a garden festival with dozens of new garden designs - lots of great places for little kids to play, swings, mazes, slides, secret hideaways, hopscotch or giant puzzle pieces on the surface of a pool, and more, a new theme each year.

Chateau de Villandry (Villandry) - The Chateau de Villandry is famous for it's Renaissance gardens. Wander around the amazing water garden, ornamental flower garden, and most amazing is the vegetable gardens. (You too can make your vegetable garden at home a real work of art.) Climb to the top of the big tower in the chateau for a bird's eye view of the gardens and river beyond.

Chateau d' Azay-le-Rideau (Azay-le-Rideau) - The charm of this 16th century chateau is that it's surrounded by water on four sides in the middle of the Indre River. Practice your grand entrances coming down the imposing staircase in the chateau.

Chateau d'Usse (Rigny-Usse) - Long before the Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland, there was the Chateau d'Usse. The author of Sleeping Beauty, Charles Perrault, was inspired by the Chateau d'Usse as the setting for the story. Inside the castle, as you wander through one tower, there are waxwork tableaux from the fairy tale.