31 December 2017

L'Hostellerie Gargantua, a hotel in Chinon

A hotel, L'Hostellerie Gargantua, occupies this 15th century building on a narrow street near the Eglise Saint-Maurice, just below the château in Chinon. The hotel "may have a real connection with Rabelais, as this was once the Palais du Bailliage, where Rabelais' father may have carried out some of his legal business," says the author of the Cadogan Loire guidebook.


The Hostellerie Gargantua offers rooms at very reasonable rates. It also has a restaurant with both indoor and outdoor seating, and prices in the 20 to 30 euro range for lunch and dinner. I'm not advertising for it, but I do think the building is interesting. The shot above shows the north façade.


Look at this Google Maps aerial view of the building and neighborhood. It's a view of the west side of the building, in the middle of the photo, with the turret. Here's a link to the hotel's web site, which you can view in English or en français. You can also find it on TripAdvisor, of course.


If you haven't experimented with Google Maps (the way I've been experimenting this morning) you might be amazed at what you can do with its maps of Chinon. The hotel Gargantua is the building right behind the tree with the red dot on it in the middle of the image. Click on the image to display it at a larger size in a separate window, and then click on it again if you see the + cursor to see more details and scroll around.


Finally, here's a view from a slightly different angle. You can see the whole château complex behind and above the town. Again, enlarge the image to see more detail and see if you can find the Gargantua hotel in this one. All credit and thanks to Google Maps, of course.

3 comments:

  1. Chinon looks good at any angle! Happy NYE, wishing you and all your readers the best in 2018!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Google Maps is pretty remarkable. The hotel rooms look very nice, as do the public space...I had to Google it out of curiosity.

    Hope you have a wonderful New Year's!

    ReplyDelete

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