Day in Angers

In 845, the Vikings invaded Angers.
In 1204 Angers was conquered by King Philippe II.
In 1585, the Huguenots invaded.

Then, more importantly, in 2010, Angers was invaded by three assistants from Nantes. One of whom was so enthusiastic that she convinced us to get the 09h55 train. On a Saturday! Grr.

It took just over half an hour to get there on the TGV, which is pretty reasonable. Google maps kindly informs me that it would have taken 19 hours to walk. The enthusiastic assistant had already thoroughly researched the town, and had made a military-style itinerary of the day's events.

We started off with a walk around the town centre, and crossed the River Maine. The view on the postcards in the shops looked spectacular, with a sweeping panorama of castles, churches and luxuriously green trees, bathed in rich sunshine. In reality, it was not quite so picturesque, due to it being winter, cold, half-cloudy, and a huge tarpaulin covering most of the castle.



For lunch, we had galettes at a creperie. I don't think i've mentioned these galettes yet, so i'll explain. They're a traditional Breton food - 'Breton' being from Brittany, the region of France where Nantes used to be. Basically, it's like a savoury crepe, which typically contains ham, cheese and an egg, but you can choose pretty much anything you want to go in them. Here's a photo of one:



For my dessert, I had three different kinds of sorbet - lime, passionfruit and Cointreau. The latter comes from Angers, so it felt appropriate to try some while I was there.

In the afternoon, we wandered down to the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin, which is the oldest church in Angers. It doesn't sound like much of an accolade, but there must've been well over 50 churches in the town. The foundations of the Collegiate church dated from the fifth century, with every layer above being built a few centuries later. Lazy French builders, I reckon. Click on photo for a better view.



Later on we went to visit the castle. It's an fairly imposing example of a castle, and is seen by guidebooks as the first of the proper 'Loire Valley Chateaux'. It houses the 'world's longest' tapestry - or the 'Apocalypse', as they call it. It's basically a cartoon strip of the book of revelations, but with a liberal helping of seven-headed dragons. I'm no biblical expert, but i'm sure dragons are fairly limited within its pages. We weren't allowed to take photos of the tapestry. I think this is partly because the flash would spoil the fabric, and partly because people would then expose it for the con it actually is. Longest tapestry, maybe. But, they'd chopped it up into sections which were a maximum of 30 feet long. There must be some tapestry-world loophole regarding cutting them up that I don't know about.


Slightly disconcerting sign - 'Apocalypse, this way'

The castle had some impressive gardens too, and the view from the top of the tower was suitably panoramic. it was trying to snow while we were on the tower, so it was perishing cold. My cold, shivering hands tried to take many photos, but swiftly decided to retreat into my pockets before frostbite settled in.

The gardens:


Freezing-cold view from the castle across the river and, unfortunately, dual-carraigeway. French town-planning doesn't take into account nice views, apparently:



The last two photos aren't entirely relevant, but I quite liked them. One is typically French, one is typically English. I wish i'd been able to get them in the same photo, but i'm not sure that 2CV drivers take kindly to being asked to pose in front of 'phone boxes. Still, here they are: