Hotel Lifehacks

A major tip has to be planning your visit to experience ‘Chartres en Lumières’ (Chartres in Lights). From April to October each year, every night post dark the city’s major monuments including the cathedral get treated to spectacular, themed light shows. The hotel is located a short drive away from the main sites, allowing you to easily park and then walk the beautiful illuminated circuit. Truly magical and free.

Explore Lucé amenities for the best deal on your budget. For breakfast one morning, miss the hotel 's and go to Rue de la République 'boulangerie.’ Enjoy a croissant or ‘pain au chocolat’ fresh out of the oven, along with a fresh cup of coffee from a café around the corner, for a tasty authentic French breakfast-there’s a saving.

For something really interesting from the cultural side, take a short drive or a bus to La Maison Picassiette. This one-man-over-30-years covered house and garden in mosaics of exquisite broken glass and pottery stand as one of the wonders of the world in ‘outsider art’–a must for any truly memorable yet wacky local attraction that most tourists overlook.

In the end, this hotel may be referred to as “smart” and cheap ‘base camp’ to travel around not only Chartres but the extended area up to Eure-et-Loir. You save on accommodation to spend the money on a dinner date at an outstanding restaurant in the old town or on a day trip by car to Château de Maintenon, residence of Louis XIV’s second wife, just 30 minutes away.