After a week here in Angers, we can easily say that we really like it. Angers is a medium-sized city, with an incredible castle that would have been a formidable fortress to discourage potential invaders when it was built in the 9th century and expanded to its current size in the 13th century. The city is filled with parks, restaurants with nice outdoor patios, excellent public transportation, a wide range of cultural activities, and has two great hospitals and two universities. We checked out the Saturday market yesterday and it’s easily twice the size of the one we loved in Orléans.
We’ve lived through a major heatwave this past week, being well over 90 degrees for 5+ days (98 yesterday) with no air conditioning in our Airbnb and little around town. We finally booked a hotel with A/C to be able to get some sleep the past three nights. Sadly though, we missed the Fête de la Musique festival celebrated here in Angers during World Music Day yesterday due to the extreme heat, which brought music of all sorts to indoor and outdoor venues across the city, and cultural events for all ages.
We visited the English-language Library in Angers, part lending library of books in English, part community hub for English speakers and those who wish to improve their English-speaking abilities. A new friend invited us to the community coffee chat which happens on Fridays, and we met a whole bunch of people, both French locals and English speakers from around the world who have chosen to make Angers their home. The feeling of community support was incredible. We left there with a couple more new friends we’ve already made plans with and two ideas for longer-term housing that is not an Airbnb. So far, Angers is a winner!
The main area that we are struggling with is food, primarily dinners. The bread, pastries, desserts (see the pear and chocolate pavlova and the lemon meringue tart above as an example), cheeses, sandwiches, wines, and beers have all been great. It’s the main dishes, particularly the meats we are struggling with. We have found the presentation of meat-based dishes here to be challenging to our palettes. While we are not big consumers of meat anyway, alternative proteins like tofu have been hard to source, chicken dishes are a rare find, and in general, cooking has been challenging in our Airbnb kitchens. Also, restaurants don’t open for dinner until 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening (or even later) and that’s late for us. We find that we opt for Italian food often.
The hotel we stayed in the past few nights to get a respite from the heat was in a food desert. We had to brave the heat and get on a bus with no air conditioning to find food. Last night, we took the bus to a shopping center that advertised a large grocery store and a bunch of little food vendors. Most were not open at 5:30 and those that were had mostly cold to-go food to reheat later (we had no microwave for that). We finally ended up in the grocery store and left with some forks and this:
A mediocre strawberry tart which we ate in the shopping mall because it wouldn’t have survived the bus ride home. It was a little sad. I’m hoping that we find our footing with restaurant food soon.
We are headed to Rennes tomorrow for a few days to check it out. We’re speeding up that trip because if we decide to stay in Angers longer-term, we need to find a housing solution here sooner rather than later. The Airbnb life and living out of suitcases is getting a little old.
À la prochaine… (see you next time)