HotelChatter

This is the place you book a stay when you're looking for the French equivalent of a Walden experience. Rooms open up to views of a nearby pond (yeah, those are swans you see swimming around in the photo above), and are decorated in a traditional style influenced by the French countryside. The hyper-masculine among you may not be into floral tapestries or toile-like wallpaper, but you'd also be hard-pressed to dispute that the apartments—with living salons, cushy couches, and all—aren't inviting and comfortable.

If you can actually muster up the energy to leave your room, there are tennis courts, an outdoor pool, historical castles, wine tours, and cycling routes waiting outdoors, with plenty of ivy-covered buildings as scenery.

It also boasts a Michelin-rated restaurant, which, if you know anything about haute cuisine and how seriously the French take the ratings system, carries some mean culinary heft. Sample dishes include Beef poached in Montlouis wine and a Viennese Pastry of Scallops with Pears, Rice and Coconut Milk.

All of these seemingly hoity-toity touches aside, the starting rates for the château aren't outrageous: €110 for a single room and €550 for an apartment, on the high-end. They even offered discounted rates in 2009 for days that the restaurant was closed, and hopefully the same will hold true in 2010.

Ugh. As if we need another reason to daydream about a French getaway. Merci beaucoup, Domain Des Hauts de Loire. Merci beau-coup.