TRAVELING IN STYLE : Up, Up & Away : TOURING BURGUNDY BY BALLOON, BARGE & HELICOPTER

None other than the Viscount and Viscountess de la Panouse were waiting to welcome us as our helicopter settled delicately on the manicured lawn fronting the 16th-Century Chateau de Thoiry outside Paris.

By now, on our third time aboard a helicopter, and on the seventh day of viewing France from fresh and unusual vantage points, we’d learned how easy it was to become accustomed to this sort of life. There’s something exhilarating about dropping out of the sky like a deus ex machina.

Ours was a special journey that had begun in Paris, in a flower-sprigged yellow-and-white room at the very top of the Inter-Continental Hotel that looked like a set for a Hollywood version of “La Boheme,” with two tiny balconies, each barely large enough for one of us to stand and look out on the rooftops of the city. Starting from there, our adventure involved three days of floating along a Burgundy canal on a luxury hotel-barge, waving at French fishermen and enjoying bright purple iris, crimson poppies and Queen Anne’s lace at eye level. Mornings, we sat lazily in the sun, watching the crew and lock tenders, or we took off on bicycles to ride through sunny villages. Afternoons, we clambered into the wicker basket of a vivid, billowing hot-air balloon and floated away into a dream.

And now, we were circling by helicopter near chateaux in the Loire and estates in the Ile-de-France, and dropping in to take tea with a marquis or join a private tour of someone’s 500-year-old palace.

In one instance there was Annabelle, Viscountess de la Panouse--a tall, slender, vivacious blonde and a former Vogue model from Minnesota who met Paul, the viscount, in Paris while she was on a modeling assignment. Several rooms in their chateau have been converted to museums, including a museum of gastronomy dedicated to the early 18th-Century chef, Careme, and recreations of his towering edible architecture that once graced the table of Talleyrand--”one of my husband’s ancestors,” Annabelle claims. After a tour through the chateau, she asked whether we’d like to see the estate. Of course we would.

So we piled into a beat-up Citroen station wagon with one of its rear doors crushed closed. “Would you be a darling and put on your seat belt?” Annabelle trilled. “I don’t have a driver’s license, but don’t worry.”

We careened wildly off beyond the chateau’s formal gardens (designed by Le Notre) to the family’s African-game reserve and private zoo. Annabelle showed us the “ligrons,” second-generation hybrids descended from the cross-breeding of a lion and a tiger.

After the ligrons, Annabelle wanted us to see the English garden because the rhododendrons were in full bloom, so we peeled off in another direction, bouncing mightily, and drove down a flight of garden steps into a 10-foot hedge of the sticky, pale-pink flowers.

Afterward, upon our return to the helicopter, our pilot had a chilled bottle of Moet et Chandon Champagne waiting as usual (tradition calls for a glass at each takeoff). We waved goodby to Annabelle, sank back against the leather upholstery and studied the green countryside near Versailles.

(The previous day we had flown along the Loire, following its course from chateau to chateau, snapping photographs as we hovered over Chambord and Chenonceaux.)

At midday we landed by the swimming pool of the Domaine de Beauvois at Luynes, near Tours, where, in the elegant 15th-Century manor house, we dined on succulent Loire salmon with hollandaise, vegetables grown on the estate, and strawberries with cream. We wondered what it would be like to stay in one of the tower rooms. There are 40 bedrooms in this Relais et Chateaux member inn, each one with different trappings, from fireplaces and medieval half-timbered ceilings and stained glass to antique armoires larger than some hotel rooms.

Our pilot, Richard, a native of Bordeaux, tends to speak with some condescension about any wines that are unfortunate enough to come from any other region. Nevertheless, he took us to Vouvray, where we looked down at the vineyards.

We landed near a hollowed-out hill to visit a cellar housing 50,000 bottles of Vouvray, some dating to 1921. After sampling several wines from recent years, we returned to the helicopter for more Champagne, and the sights of other chateaux and the intricate geometric gardens of Chateau de Villandry to Usse and the Chateau d’Esclimont which French fairy-tale writer Charles Perrault used as a model for Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

At the cocktail hour our helicopter settled down on a grassy plot between the terrace and the swan-filled lake of Chateau d’Esclimont. This fairy-tale castle was built in 1543 but came into the famous De la Rochefoucauld family through marriage in 1807. In 1865, the castle was restored, and the motto, C’est Mon Plaisir (It’s My Pleasure) was inscribed above the door.

The 54-room Chateau d’Esclimont, about 20 minutes from Chartres in Saint Symphorien le-Chateau, is, like Domaine de Beauvois, a Grandes Etapes Francaises hotel and a member of Relais et Chateaux. One of the great luxuries at Esclimont is space, from huge tiled bathrooms with enormous tubs to a 150-acre park filled with deer and wild ducks.

From the balcony of our blue-and-white toile suite, we watched our helicopter lift off to return to Paris; it would be back for us the following morning.

After sipping the house aperitif, Champagne sparked with a bit of cognac and mandarin orange liqueur, we dined splendidly--on lobster and sole in Champagne sauce--by candlelight in the pastel dining room under a crystal chandelier. There is a second dining room, more baronial, with tooled leather wallpaper from Cordoba.

The next day, during a tour of the Chateau de Maintenon north of Chartres, we landed along an unfinished aqueduct that Louis XIV had intended to carry the waters of the Eure to the gardens of Versailles. Madame de Maintenon, his beloved mistress and secret second wife, bought this small, charming castle in 1674, and members of her family own it today, opening it to the public at certain hours.

Our helicopter tour, though, was life in the fast lane compared to our slowpoke barge, Horizon II, which was our first adventure on this tour of France. Between Sunday afternoon, when we boarded, and Wednesday morning, when the helicopter arrived, we had traveled from Tonnere via Tanlay to Ancy-le-Franc, a distance of less than 15 miles, which the helicopter covered in a matter of minutes. Earlier, we had been delivered by car from Paris to Burgundy, stopping in Joigny to see Michel Lorain’s A la Cote Saint Jacques, a Guide Michelin three-star restaurant with its own new and very elegant little country hotel.

Soon afterward, the Horizon II crew greeted us with hors d’ouvres and glasses of Champagne and informed us that we would go ballooning shortly. The cool, gray spring afternoon turned to gold as the balloons were inflated, and soon we were floating over the villages of Burgundy while people below waved and called out to us. We flew over the red roofs and gray stone of the farmhouse compounds and set down in a farmer’s field. Strangers thronged around us and the balloon captains poured more Champagne and offered it to the Burgundians as well.

Meanwhile, the sunny days we spent on board the barge were so effortless that we soon fell into a comfortable pattern. Breakfast was served on the sunny deck; obtained from the Tanlay village baker were rolls crusted on top with broken sugar cubes, and apple-filled pastries, and custard-raisin buns--all served with butter and jam; from the village market came fresh orange juice, a bowl of cherries, and peaches; and there was coffee in little pots, and pitchers of hot milk.

Afterwards, we lolled on deck and watched Patrice Andrieu, our dapper captain, at the wheel. Olaf, an amiable, stone-deaf, chocolate-colored standard poodle that lives on board, would sit beside us, cocking his head.

Because we were often ballooning during the long twilight, our major meal was served at lunchtime, usually on deck under blue and white umbrellas. One day the menu would include giant shrimp in a cream sauce, followed by pan-fried scallops of turkey with tomatoes Provencal, cauliflower au gratin and Brussels sprouts, then cheese and a fresh black current sorbet . There were always two wines--with this particular luncheon, for example, a Meursault and a Pommard. Supper, which followed the ballooning and cocktails, was late and usually consisted of hot and cold buffet dishes.

The cabins on our barge were air-conditioned, and each contained twin or double beds and had a private bathroom with toilet and shower. Each evening, the barge tied up along the canal, usually near a village, so that theoretically we could go into town; but by the time our late supper was finished, everyone in Burgundy had been in bed for hours.

Sometimes we toured local castles and chateaux in the early afternoons, or went wine tasting, or followed vicariously the maneuvers at local battlefields from the times of Caesar and or Napoleon, but nothing on our agenda was outrageously demanding.

On our last morning aboard the barge, we bid adieu to the crew and took off by balloon from the chateau of L’Ancy-le-Franc in a pearl-gray dawn. From the air, the chateau stood a bit apart from the village, like a haughty great gray dowager. In the forest below, we saw a rabbit, then a fox. Everything was still.

A lush, green field of young wheat sent up its own thermal as we soared above it, almost touching the tight green heads of grain. We crossed over a pasture and startled a young horse. A cat, terrified, leaped out of the eaves of a building and ran across the rooftop.

Two Mirage jets from the French Air Force base at Dijon buzzed us, then arced back to dip their wings a second time in obeisance to the balloon. Soon afterward, our helicopter arrived, settling down onto the field near the balloon. Richard signaled us to board at once, so our last memory of a village somewhere in the vicinity of Chatillon-sur-Seine was of sleepy Burgundians rubbing their eyes and staring in astonishment as the people who could have been Martians climbed out of a deflating balloon and into a helicopter and soared up into the atmosphere.

If you get the idea that this is an expensive trip, you’re right. Example: Horizon Cruises’ Royal Canal Cruises and Balloon Adventures cost $1,400 to $1,580 per person, double occupancy, for a half-week, $2,660 to $2,980 for a full week. (Telephone Hemphill Harris at (800) 252-2103).

Other details can be obtained from La Cote Saint Jacques, 89300 Joigny, France, or telephone (86) 62.09.70. Closed three weeks in January.

Chateau d’Esclimont and Domaine de Beauvois, c/o David Mitchell & Co., 200 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016, telephone (212) 696-1323.

Chateau de Thoiry, 25 miles west of Paris at Thoiry en Yvelines, 78770 France, phone (33) 34.87.40.67.