As I mentioned in my last post, we’re vacationing in Italy and it’s been a great time so far. We’ve spent the last three days in Bergamo, a smallish city an hour northeast of Milan. It’s set on three levels, across seven hills: Citta Bassa (Lower Town), Citta Alta (Upper Town), and the top level:
We took a field trip out the the countryside, just 20 minutes from home, to the little village of Grez-Neuville. Really, it’s a village made up of two smaller villages: Grez and Neuville, which are separated by the Mayenne River. A lovely bridge connects the two. This photo was taken standing on the Neuville side,
The New Year has arrived and with it, a chance to look back at the exciting Christmas week holiday we spent with one of our children who came to visit us in Angers. It was a fun week and we kept busy, despite it being bitterly cold and each of us getting mildly sick with
France changed from daylight savings time this past weekend and for the first time, our evening activities this week have happened in the twilight/dark. Greg snapped this lovely photo of the Cathédrale Saint-Maurice d’Angers on Sunday looking beautiful while the bells tolled on our way to dinner at a friend’s house. This was definitely an
I find myself posting less these days, not because there aren’t good and interesting things happening — there are, in fact we are working on a couple of new things that we’ll share soon. I think this is happening because living in France has become less like a “what adventure are we going to have
We took a walk on a beautiful fall day recently and stumbled across, as apparently one does when living in a French neighborhood, this lovely chateau, less than three miles from our house. Château de la Perrière was completed in 1699 and now serves as a golf clubhouse to the attached 18-hole golf course and
This foot bridge, located a few miles south of Angers over the Maine River in Bouchemaine (translates to “mouth of Maine”), was a key access point for the United States Army’s 5th Infantry Division to help liberate the city of Angers from German control on August 11, 1944 during WWII. Greg found this while on
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