We got back late last night from our Château weekend, and for the first time ever, I was a bit sad about coming back to Paris. I would've liked to have had just one more day to explore the region and spend time with C.

The Château was great, minus a minor (major?) hiccup - they'd forgotten to turn on the hot water heater. As you saw in the previous pictures, our room had a fantastic jacuzzi tub and it was one of the reasons I chose this particular place (bathtubs being a fairly rare thing in Paris). So I was pretty bummed out, when, at 10:30pm, we realized there was no hot water and that it would take 3 hours for it to heat up. Plus their dishwasher kept causing the breaker to trip, so we had several minute power outages.

C saw how disappointed I was, and decided to take matters into his own hands. He went and borrowed an electric hot water kettle from the kitchen and then the man spent an hour filling up that damn tub, liter by liter, all the while I was semi-pouting in the bedroom and thinking we should just laisser tomber the whole thing. He finally told me to come take a look, and I was extremely surprised to see his plan had actually worked! Not to mention that he'd thought of everything - he'd brought bubble bath, candles and wine. What a change to be with a man who not only thinks ahead, but then makes the effort to actually do it!

Plus the owners felt so bad the next day that we ended up not having to pay anything besides the 30% deposit we'd already given them - which was a nice surprise that meant we had lots of money left over for yummy dinners and souvenirs. So all is well that ends well.

If anyone else is looking to do something similar, I found our place through a website called Bienvenue au Château. They cover Châteaux in what is often known as "le grand ouest" - ie Brittany, Normandy and the Loire Valley. If you're looking for places elsewhere in France, there's also Châteaux Country or the pricier Smartbox option.