Finally, the heat wave that has been smothering western Europe since late May has fizzled and we are being treated to a pleasantly warm (around 75-78F most days) and lovely summer in Angers. This is a city that has many events and exhibitions going on simultaneously and seems to execute on them flawlessly. It’s been
We finished out our French countryside trip last week with a visit to “Le Mystère des Faluns,” another troglodyte cave system created by workers in the 18th and 19th centuries who mined limestone as a building material. It’s now an underground museum / art installation that you have to see to really appreciate. Much of
We rented a car Monday and headed south from Angers about a hour to the French countryside. Along the way, we stopped at this incredible site, Château de Brissac. This fabulous chateau has been owned by the Cossé-Brissac family since 1502. The title of “Duke of Brissac” has been handed down for over 500 years,
SUCCESS!!! The Château d’Angers will be the view from the kitchen window of our new apartment for the next five months! Granted, it will be from a longer distance, at an angle, and we won’t be able to see the grounds from where we are, but all the same, there will be a castle in
We thoroughly enjoyed the Saturday market in Rennes earlier this week called the “Marché des Lices” which has been a staple of life in old town Rennes every Saturday morning for the past 400+ years (read about the anniversary celebration here). The market takes place on the streets and goes on for several blocks, and
We made it to Rennes and began exploring this week. The streets are very beautiful with lots of interesting old buildings. The leaning buildings (photo above) in a city square from about 1500 are literally only standing because the others are holding them up. Check out the two in the middle. There were much newer
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
We arrived in Angers, France on Saturday evening after some minor train delays and schlepping of the bike and bags from Orléans. We’re staying in a small apartment built recently in the rear of the courtyard of an house built in the 1800s along a quiet street in the city center. Angers has been voted
We’re in the final couple of days in Orléans and packing up to go to Angers (pronounced Ahn-jzay) on Saturday. We’re saying goodbye to our favorite bakeries and trying to figure out how to get all of the belongings we’ve distributed around the apartment back into our bags. We’ve put most of our stuff in storage
One down, eleven months to go on our one-year visa! We’ve learned so much in this first month, and yet we feel that we have so much more to learn to determine where we might want to stay a while. We had a strategy when we got here and it’s still the strategy, but being