Another French wedding

The plan for the coming weekend was to attend a second weekend - this time the hero of the day was Mathilde's cousin Emeric (and his wife-to-be, of course!), who lives in Hong-Kong, who was getting married near Le Mans on Saturday. The plan was for us to head to spend Friday and Saturday nights in nearby La Fleche. Francoise decided to take scenic county roads across the Charante-Maritimes, Vendee and Maine-et-Loire departments, before taking us to our final destination in the Sarthe.

Our first stop was at a cute little village in the Vendee, which was blessed with a rather impressive medieval tower, where we stopped to picnic by a nice river. We then stopped for a quick drink by the impressively picturesque Les-Rosiers-sur-Loire. This is what a small town by the Loire river should look like (even if there are more famous and prestigious towns along the Loire river - the castles of the Loire River are justly famous!). Anyways, we stopped here for a quick drink before pushing on towards La Fleche.

La Fleche is one of those typical French provincial small town. Picturesque, without being over the top, but seemed quite lively when we were there - there was a scene at the main square with a local band (I suppose) playing. After having a quick look around town (in particular the area around the river was rather pretty), we had an enjoyable dinner at the local creperie - very good food at a more than decent price (then again, we are used to Cote d'Azur prices, which means pretty much anywhere else in France apart from Paris seems cheap...).

The next day, we had a bit of time to kill before the wedding, so we decided to head over to a lake just next to our hotel, where I had time to go for a bit of a swim. And then we sped over to Sarge-Le-Les-Mans, where the wedding ceremony was taking place. Now, I was quite looking forward to the wedding, as Emeric's wife to be hailed from Hong Kong. International weddings are usually good fun ;-) The church ceremony, taking place in the picturesque parish church, was rather interesting, with reading of texts both in French and Cantonese.

The church part done, we sped down to Clermont-Creans, located just next to La Fleche, where the actual celebrations were taking place. No expense was obviously spared when it came to this wedding - the festivities were taking place in a proper French castle! (Château d'Oyré). So the location couldn't really get any better than this - especially as we were once again blessed with pretty much perfect summer weather (not a given in this part of France). I'm sure the numerous guests from Hong-Kong were delighted - maybe they will leave thinking all of France is like this ;)

The celebrations themselves where fantastic. I think there was a nice mix of people attending - family of course (including Mahtilde's uncles Gerard, Didier and of course Emeric's dad Jacques), Emeric's local French friends, Emeric's expat friends, and of course all the guests from Hong-Kong. The food was absolutely fantastic - not surprisingly considering the food was delivered by a Michelin-starred restaurant. Everything from the aperif to desert was spot on.

We left the castle in the little hours of the morning, having spent a fantastic time at the Chateau. Thanks to Emeric and his lovely wife for a great ceremony - we hope we will meet them later on in Hong-Kong, during our Asian adventure...

The next morning, we had to get up rather early, get packed, and head off, as we had a train to catch from Le Mans to Paris. So unfortunately we had to give the Sunday brunch being organized a miss.

We had a few hours to kill in Paris, which is always nice, especially when the weather is fantastic as it was today. We started off our day in Paris with a visit to Musee Guimet - which is the museum dedicated to Asian arts and civilizations. As you may have guessed there was a slight Japanese angle to our visit - there was an exhibition on about erotic arts in Japanese Printed arts. The exhibition was pretty interesting (actually there was some pretty explicit stuff on display!) - I also quite enjoyed the permanent exhibition. Unfortunately, we didn't have to time to visit nearly all of it, as we had a rendez-vous with Sarah pencilled in.

Our meeting with Sarah was planned near Les Jardins de Luxembourg, which meant we had to cross a lot of Paris to meet her. Of course we could've taken the metro, but, well, Paris is one of those cities best seen on foot, especially when the weather is great as it was today. We made it nearly on time ( we lost a few crucial minutes buying ice cream!), and headed off for a drink with Sarah in the Jardins de Luxembourg - a great meeting place in Paris when the weather is good. Great to catch up with Sarah and get an update on her always busy life - unfortunately it was all too quick as we had our flight to catch back to Nice.

So that brought an end to a very busy week travelling back and forth around Western France. And for me, back to work. Doh... But, on a positive note, only two weeks to go before our big Asian adventure starts!