Chateau Alizés

I have a mixed review for the Chateau. The pros are that the food was wonderful and the wines were great. The French chef and his assistant were wonderful and charming. The English couple who ran the house tried very hard to please and we appreciated the fact that they were in a difficult position. The cons are that the house is nice, but not great. The house will hold 9 couples and there were only 3 couples including ourselves who were there when we went. It was extremely difficult to be with 4 people we did not know for 5 + days. We were together for breakfast, lunch, cocktails, dinner, and excursions. The excursions to the market and nut farm were just *okay*. The trip to the Caviar farm was definitely set up to encourage us to buy. We talked to Tradewinds many times before going on the trip to tell them that we wanted to hire a private guide to take us to the caves to see the cave paintings and to the prehistoric museum for which the area is famous. We were assured by the Tradewinds people that they would contact the chateau and that we could arrange this when we arrived at the Chateau. The people at the Chateau never received the request and were not able to help us (not their fault). They did not know any guides and were not aware of the things we wanted to see. The Tradewinds people in the Islands were very hard to reach and over promised and under delivered. We could have arranged a private English speaking Archeological guide from home. The English couple felt badly about this and did take us to the Lascaux cave museum one day, but failed to secure an English speaking guide; so it was disappointing. They tried to make up for the fact that the people in the Carribean had promised to line that up for us. There is definitely a lot of pressure to buy into the Tradewinds trips. It would be better to take the whole house, take your own group, and pre arrange excursions to some of the famous things for which the area is known. ”

Beautiful Chateau!

It is a beautiful place and as long as you are the type that wants every decision to be made for you, then you will love it. It is like going to adult camp. You are in the Chateau with about 18 guests and you have every meal and every activity together. You have a couple people that take you on wonderful tours and act as your camp counselor. This is an organization that is primarily for timeshare vacations on boats. The whole 5 days, you are definitely pressured into joining the club and buying lots of points. In fact the last night, although my husband and I had to get up at 5:30am to drive to the airport, they had me pulled aside until well after midnight, trying to get me to join even without my spouses approval. I booked 2 rooms, so that my friends could join us and I was really embarrassed that they pressured them to join as well. If you are already planning on joining Tradewinds, or are open to hearing timeshare presentations, then you will love the trip. We were suppose to have a french Michelin chef and wanted the whole French Chateau experience, but actually all the staff including the chef were from the UK.”

Beautiful Chateau!

It is a beautiful place and as long as you are the type that wants every decision to be made for you, then you will love it. It is like going to adult camp. You are in the Chateau with about 18 guests and you have every meal and every activity together. You have a couple people that take you on wonderful tours and act as your camp counselor. This is an organization that is primarily for timeshare vacations on boats. The whole 5 days, you are definitely pressured into joining the club and buying lots of points. In fact the last night, although my husband and I had to get up at 5:30am to drive to the airport, they had me pulled aside until well after midnight, trying to get me to join even without my spouses approval. I booked 2 rooms, so that my friends could join us and I was really embarrassed that they pressured them to join as well. If you are already planning on joining Tradewinds, or are open to hearing timeshare presentations, then you will love the trip. We were suppose to have a french Michelin chef and wanted the whole French Chateau experience, but actually all the staff including the chef were from the UK.”

One of a kind experience!

Joan and I just finished finished enjoying 6 days and 5 nights in the most wonderful of places- Chateau Alizes-a 17th century Chateau set in the countryside about an hour from Bordeaux, France. We were one of 5 couples and a single gal (11 total) who had an all inclusive, over the top experience. Gourmet meals and French wines (evening meals were 5-6 courses with matched wines with each course, duck confit at one of the lunches, made to order full breakfasts) and planned daily excursions to small area historic towns for wine tastings, caviar farm tour and tasting, nut farm tour, shopping and site seeing and more. We even canoed and kayaked on the river that the Chateau overlooked and had cocktails in the pool bar at Chateau Elizes that Hemingway was a frequent guest at. The people were wonderful and the food a gastronomic delight. We will have to starve for a month now to shed the pounds we gained but it was truly worth it.”