A weekend in Angers (Maine et Loire)

Thursday, July 12, 2007
The hardest part of our trips by car may just be the beginning. First I have to get the car from the garage (a 15 minute walk) and then I have to find a parking place near home in order to load up. On Thursday, I drove around for 45 minutes before finding a legal spot. The “meter maids” are without pity here and will ticket you – 35 € - and then have your car towed to a compound if you are in an illegal spot.
Now, for regular people, loading the car should be easy; one suitcase each perhaps? But we only take one suitcase between us. Then, we take a cooler to hold items we buy at markets and for our picnics and water. Then, we each have a knapsack, in case we decide to hike. We have another bag with shoes and a bag for carrying wine…just in case, and, well you get the picture. Enough of packing and on with the trip!
I picked Tim up at work around 17H on Thursday and we headed out of Paris through Suresne and St. Cloud. We marvelled that we had never seen these pretty suburbs of Paris. Traffic was heavy until we hit the A-11 autoroute. I had booked a chambres d’hôtes (B&B) near Le Mans , about 160 kms from Paris, to keep the drive short and allow time for a nice dinner. Tim was concerned that the place would not be up to par since it was out in the middle of nowhere and the road that led to it was not even on the GPS. It turned out to be delightful, with beautiful gardens and a huge room.
We drove to the nearby town of La Ferté Bernard and walked around before dinner at Le Perdrix. We had a very good meal and drank a Chinon 2000 that was elegant with good fruit but Tim thought it did not have enough structure or acidity. For most of the evening, we were the only two people in the restaurant. The décor was very 80’s with pink wallpaper. The owner was dressed in the same period in a black and yellow top with huge shoulder pads.
Friday, July 13, 2007
The day dawned warm and sunny which was a treat since it has been rainy most of the summer. Our objective for the weekend was to explore the city of Angers and surrounding area. Friends had said it could be an ideal place to live in France. We wasted no time getting there. The Château d’Angers looms over the city and is impressive on its own but it also houses the famous Apocalypse tapestries, made in the 14th century. They are 338 ft long. It was such a beautiful day that we decided to see them another time and did a walking tour of the city instead. Angers impressed us with its interesting history, architecture and cleanliness. People were friendly.
Near lunch time, we passed a small café (Le Canaille). A client dining outside told us it was very good so we reserved an outside table and came back later for lunch. We enjoyed it and the menu (entrée, main and desert!) was only 11.25 € per person.
We left Angers and stopped in Pont de Cé to buy wine. We passed the towns of Coutures, le Sale Village (I love that name – the dirty village) and visited Gennes. We took the D751 along the Loire to Saumur. Saumur looked appealing but was very crowded so we decided to return another time.
We crossed the Loire and passed through Les Rosiers sur Loire on our way to our chambres d’hôtes in St. Mathurin sur Loire. There was a nice looking restaurant called La Toque Blanche in Les Rosiers.
La Bouqetterie - the chambres d’hôtes….hmm. When we arrived we had a suspicion that our long string of successes with chambres d’hôtes might be about to end. The house was large and probably quite elegant at one time. It overlooked the Loire with the main street between the house and the river. It had a big garden that was once quite lovely, I am sure but was now overgrown. We were in a building attached to the house on the garden side. I had booked for the table d’hôtes (dinner prepared by the owner) and that was a big mistake. She arrived about 10 minutes before we were supposed to eat and said, “What can I give you!” We had salad and little triangles of filo pastry filled with something. This woman was spaced out and totally distraught over her teenagers.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
The next morning, as we were preparing to head out, she stuck her head out the window, still in her terry towel bathrobe and said, “Mais vous êtes matinals”. “My but you are early birds”. It was 8:15. We passed up breakfast and headed to Angers to “assess” the market. It was fabulous! There were hundreds of vegetable stalls (it is a very agricultural area) and the meat and fish were fresh, appealing and about half Parisian prices. We were now in desperate need of coffee and something to eat but it wasn’t easy since it was July 14, Bastille Day; the National Holiday in France. We eventually found an excellent little pastry shop that served coffee too.
We hadn’t planned to do wine touring on this trip but as we were passing the Maison des Vins d’Anjou Tim suddenly remembered he had tasted some impressive wines from an Anjou producer a few months before. Despite the fact that this tiny producer was not on their official list, the young women at the Maison des Vins were extremely helpful. While he wasn’t easy to find, they searched the internet and through some obscure links, finally came up w a phone number. They warned that he wouldn't likely be open on Bastille Day. I called and fortunately he was there for a while so we headed to La Grange aux Belles in Mûrs-Erigné. Marc Houtin who has been making wine for only four years was delightful and we spent almost 2 hours talking and tasting his wines. He was so pleased that we loved them but even more pleased when we loaded the car up with seven cases of his wine. As thanks, he offered us a bottle of his very best dessert wine and set us up with a local real estate agent.
We had planned to picnic and hike a bit but it was now too late for that. One of our Guides recommended a restaurant in St Jean de Linère, 15 minutes away, so I called and we headed over to Auberge de la Roche. Everything was good except there were too many attempts at fancy vegetables that did not work. The chef/owner and his wife were very warm and welcoming and after our chat they gave us a copy of a local cookbook that we had seen for sale earlier.
Continuing on, we drove along the Loire through many little towns and headed back to our room for a rest before going to for dinner.
We took a leisurely and circuitous route back to our room to explore more area villages. We went through Chalonnes and Brissac-Quince which has an unusual looking, 7 storey chateau that is the tallest in France. Le Thoureil had many power boats moored along its dock. Turquant has a windmill and Candes-St. Martin was very pretty. There are troglodyte houses built into the tuffeau stone between Montsoreau and Saumur. Some of the caves are now being used to grow mushrooms. Along the highway, we passed a war memorial flying a Canadian flag.
Saumur was jammed with traffic and people. We stopped briefly to pick up information at the tourist office and continued on to our room where we changed and headed out again for dinner.
We crossed the Loire on the bridge that was already down to one lane to prepare for the July 14 fireworks. We returned to Gennes to explore the village and pronounced it liveable. We had a nice dinner at L’Aubergade in Gennes and I drove back to the chambres d’hôtes. The main street was closed so I had to use back roads and a small lane to access the place. Darkness was approaching so we quickly walked into the village to experience the celebrations in a small town. There was a band set up on the church steps and everyone was out. Tim and I sat on the edge of the wall along the Loire and waited for the fireworks. The street lights were bright and I commented that it would be so much better if they were turned off. At that moment a man arrived, unlocked a box on a pole and with the flip of a switch, the town turned dark! The fireworks were wonderful and lit up the night and the water. It was fun! As soon as they ended, the street lights came back on and we headed home.
We had to put the electric shutters down for privacy in our room. The shutters covered the windows and the door. As they completed their descent, there was an ominous noise. Tim tried to raise them but nothing happened! Since it was about 1:00 a.m., we decided to deal with it in the morning, in the hopes that it was a temporary problem. It did not feel good to be prisoners, though.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
At 7:45, we were still imprisoned and I started calling our dizzy host, but only got the answering machine. We were packed and ready to leave but could not get out. I finally called her mobile phone and she answered. She came down in her white terry robe and said that we had broken her shutter! She could not understand. They had worked perfectly for 10 years. We threatened to call the Pompiers (firemen). Eventually, we broke the shutter down to escape. We were happy to leave the place.
We stopped in Saumur for the Sunday market. It was pitiful but the town looked interesting and we did part of a walking tour up to the chateau.
We stopped at the market in Montsoreau and bought our picnic and our dinner. Tim found a nice spot to stop for lunch in a forest after which we decided to head back to Paris. We ended up on a brand new highway A-85 that was not on any map we have, nor on our GPS system. Unfortunately, it was headed in the wrong direction and there were no off-ramps for kilometres! We eventually got turned back around and except for a very bad accident that narrowed the highway to one lane and then closed it after we passed, to allow a helicopter to land, we had clear sailing all the way home. Despite the distressing accident and the bad chambre d’hôtes, it was a good weekend.