Angers and Le Mans

So on we carried towards Angers, where Mathilde’s dad lives. We made a lunch stop at Saint-Aignan, located slam-bang in the middle of the Loire valley, famed for its renaissance-era castles. This particular town is not one of the more famous ones, but is still well worth a short stop-over. The streets of the town centre are typical for its region, and rather nice to stroll down, but the absolute highlights are the Romanesque church (with its crypt, with frescos dating back to the 10th century) and the castle (which goes back even further, having elements dating back to the 9th century). We only checked out the castle from the outside, and took in the rather splendid view over the Loire River, and then carried on towards Angers.

We arrived in the afternoon, and started preparing for dinner – we had been invited to dine at Herve’s and Nathalie’s place (Nathalie is Francoise’s sun). After a tour around the place (they have done significant extensions work since I went there last time, around 6 years ago), we got down to business. The food was typically delicious home-cooked fare, followed by a rather delicious cognac for digestif (I am normally not a big fan of cognac – but this one was just SOOOO smooth…). As the case normally is in France, we ate well, drank well, and just generally had a great time.

The next day, the plan was to head to Le Mans, where Mathilde’s aunt Danielle lives with her husband Francis, together with granddad Robert. Things kicked off with another great family lunch (Dani had cooked a rather delicious chicken for us), followed by an art demonstration (since retiring, Dani has picked up painting – and very well so I must say!) and some chilling out in the garden (this involved tasting granddad Robert’s eau de vie – which culminated in them giving me a rather impressive pot of eau de vie – apparently I’m about the only one in the family drinking any of it, sadly enough!? Well, good for me, anyway ;-) ).

We then headed to the old town of Le Mans to burn off some of them calories we’d acquired during the meal. The old town is a rather stunning ensemble of half-timbered houses – it is not surprising it is used as shooting location for a lot of movies. The highlight of Old Le Mans is the stunning cathedral – a real masterpiece of Gothic Architecture. We’d visited it a couple of years ago on our way to Paris, but were happy to reacquaint ourselves with it.

After another very nice meal at Dani’s and Francis’ place, we headed back into town for a spectacle of the night – “Les Nuits de Chimere”. It’s basically a pretty cool little event that happens all evenings during the summer. The concept is basically that they project some scenes / light spectacles on some of the more famous historic monuments of Le Mans – namely the cathedral and the city walls. The effects vary from little mini-plays to just giving the cathedral walls some new colours. Really good fun, altogether! That brought an end to our brief sejour in Anjou, as it was time to head on to Nantes.