Val de Loire

How can you possibly not like the Loire Valley? A place that has more castles that have been written about in Disney stories, where a salad involves rillons (pork belly cooked in lard and browned with caramel), lardons and ham accompanied by a few lettuce leaves (but at least it comes with a decent dressing, which is more than can be said for most salads you get in London....), where anything that isn't a salad is served with frites, where trying to get an outdoor table for lunch invites dramatic remonstrations from a waitress complaining "Mais c'est impossible! Voyez! C'est complet!", where turning up for dinner at a restaurant without a reservation is met with looks of disapproval from a dour-faced waitress and replies of "Vous n'avez pas reservé? Je ne sais pas, hein?", where you can have dinner in a troglodyte cave, where a quick lunch ends up taking hours, where it takes at least three hours to have dinner in a half-empty restaurant that will serve no more than five tables on a Saturday night?

Château at Saumur, where a castle has existed since the 12th Century