Déjà New

Returning to a beloved route through France with her husband and kids in tow, Jo Rodgers gets a lesson in how additional travel companions can transform a place you thought you knew

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THE DRIVE SOUTH THROUGH NORMANDY was familiar. Or at least it would have been if not for the thunderclaps and warm sideways rain. While we waited at a rest stop for the weather to ease up, my husband, Andrew, and I showed our sons, ages two and five, pictures from the last trip we took abroad together before they were born, when we traveled on the same road through western France. We'd had a bag of cherries on the center console and the heater going full blast in a rented Morgan convertible. Last year we decided to re-create that journey, punctuated with overnights at some of the grandest chateaus in all the land, this time with our two small chaps.

The author's sons, Kit, two, and Henry, five, in SaintÉmilion; the circular pool at Hotel Château du Grand-Lucé

There's a hidden "Beauty and the Beast" quality to the setting of Hotel Château du Grand-Lucé, our first stop of the trip, in the Loire Valley, about an hour north of Tours. The approach to the 80-acre estate is through a brief, sleepy village, Le GrandLucé, and a locked gate that obscures the sight of the 18th-century limestone mansion inside. As we spilled out, punch-drunk after nine hours in the car, swallows were climbing and diving around the slate roof. The four of us stood there, chins tipped, ensorcelled by the place.

Modern pops in a guest room at Domaine des Etangs Auberge; the grounds of Hotel Château du Grand-Lucé