Christmas in Angers!

Time for that special time of the year again – yes, that would be Christmas! This time, the plan was to spend it with Mathilde’s dad and Francoise in Angers.

We hit the road on Friday evening, with me picking up Mathilde from her school. The plan was to spend the night in Lyon, staying with our friends Karine and Joann (and young Lucas). Apart from some rather heavy traffic (which we expected) on entering Lyon, the trip was thankfully uneventful. Karine and Joann welcomed us with a delicious dinner, followed by “a couple” of drinks (mostly consumed by me and Joann) – especially that Calva from the Sarthe was absolutely lethal. All in all then, we had a very pleasant short stay in Lyon!

We hit the road relatively early on Saturday, with me at the steering wheel (surprisingly, without excessive adverse after-effects after the Calvados from last night). We arrived in Angers just in time for dinner, excellent timing if I may say so! After a game of scrabble and some catching up with Joel and Francoise (and Marcelle, of course, who was also there), we hit the sack, tired but happy.

The next day, apart from the usual activities we get up to in Angers (eating extremely well, jogging, playing scrabble and just lazying about in general), we also decided to jump in the car and head out for some touristy action. Angers (and even more so the area East from Angers – the Loire valley) is famous for its castles, so we decided to visit one of them – Plessis-Macé. This castle was transformed into its current Gothic Flamboyant style during the 15^th century. The castle, still to this day privately owned, is a bit more military in style than a lot of the other castles in the area (which seem more built for pleasure and showing off, than war). Unfortunately, we couldn’t visit the castle, but there is a nice footpath and a big park around the castle, which we took advantage of.

On the way back to Angers, we stopped off at another castle – Plessis-Bourré. This castle is one of the more important ones in the region, and apparently a very popular setting for movies, since it is one of the few castles in the regions that hasn’t had its exterior altered since it was built more than five centuries ago. It looks very impressive indeed from the outside – unfortunately we didn’t have the chance to visit this castle either (it was too late). Another time!

And that brings us to Monday, yep that’s right, Christmas eve! The plan was to spend it over at Nathalie and Herve’s place (Nathalie is Francoise’s daughter) in Angers. Xavier and Aude also made it for the occasion. Xavier had the brilliant idea to make the celebration a fancy dress party; a first one for me as far as Xmas is concerned! Thankfully, Francoise had a bunch of costumes at the house, so we all found something suitable. I was dressed as some sort of Egyptian ruler from the time of the Pharaohs. I think Xavier probably deserved the price as Zorro though, or perhaps Colin as Superman (or Super-Colin?) or Titouan as Spiderman?

The meal was, as always in France, absolutely delicious, from starter (scallops), to main course (somewhat unexpectedly, kangaroo!) to dessert (buche de noel, what else?). And naturally, rather large quantities of wine and other alcoholic beverages were also consumed (including some very nice and smooth Irish whisky, the name of which I cannot remember, unfortunately). And of course the highlight of the evening was the distribution of the pressies (which is still to me a magic moment even though I’m as they say getting on a bit…). No, sorry, correction – the hightlight was the fact that we had a super time in great company!