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Spain may be a sightseer’s Shangri-La, but is still ranked only in second place as a global travel destination, justly or unjustly. The top spot belongs to France, and France is now my next-door neighbor. A Madrid-Paris flight takes about as long and costs about as much as a San Francisco-Phoenix flight I might have…
You now gaze wonderingly at the Château de Chambord, ordered up by King Francis I as a sixteenth century hunting lodge, today often regarded as the single most spectacular of the 300+ castles in France’s Loire Valley. The France tourist will find the château’s 440 rooms (and 282 fireplaces, and 84 staircases) on a 13,000…