August 12, 2012 Angers and Dinner at la Croisette, Béhuard, France

August 12, 2012 Angers and Dinner at la Croisette, Béhuard, France

We got up and had breakfast of bread and butter and jam and tea and coffee and a yogurt in the breakfast room at our B and B.  We asked our hostess where we could get groceries and she suggested a small market in Savvenieres that was opened by the local people on Sunday morning.  So after breakfast we drove across the bridge to Savvenieres and stopped a small grocery store.  It was nicely stocked but we decided to drive on to Angers rather than carry food with us all day.   As it turned out not much is open on Sunday afternoon and that would turn out to be our last chance to buy food.   

We found the auto route and drove into Angers and parked at the base of the Castle walls beside the river.  We then spent about fifteen minutes walking up the steps to the big church in the center of the old Town.  Angers is a fortified position on the north side of the Loire River.  It has been the capital of this western Loire region since the 1200’s.  The British used to own the north side of the river for many years, so it was an important defended position.  In fact when we got to the fort (chateau) we saw excavations that dated back 6000 years to the Neolithic era at the top of the hill inside the fortress.

We saw a Tourist Information Office sign and so we walked up the street toward the fort and the office.  When we arrived we found a large tourist information office with lots of staff to answer questions and lots of brochures on Angers and the surrounding countryside.  One of the interesting things about France is that it has a highly developed system of tourist information offices, with bathrooms and lots of multi-lingual attendants.  We did not find any town without one, even the smallest towns we visited had a tourist information office with at least three or four persons, one of which spoke English open 7 days a week.  How smart.  Here ends the additional text added on September 18, 2012.

Original text. 

Since it was Sunday, there was very little open, so we drove into Angers, distance of about 15 to 20 miles.  We parked at the bottom of the City beside the River and walked up the hill to the upper city where the tourist information office was located and the Chateau.  Angers has been inhabited since Neolithic times.  It sits high on the south side of the Loire.  During the 100 Years War England owned the opposite bank of the river, so it faced the enemy.  It had 17 towers but also has a vineyard and garden inside the walls of the Castle.  We walked around the ramparts and then went through the Apocalypse Tapestry museum.  The “Apocalypse” was woven at the end of the 14^th Century during the period of continual war with England for control of this territory and is filled with iconography of heaven and hell and lots of mutilation.   It is huge series of tapestries that fill a good sized museum.  Much of the details were hard to see because the museum is kept in low light to protect the tapestry from destruction from light.   Then we went to the Musée of Beaux Artes that is only a regional Museum.  We saw only one picture that we had not seen before that interested us.  It was painted by Georges Ribemont Dessaignes in 1907 and was both a pointillist and fauvism composition of trees beside the water.   Lovely with a pinkish glow in the background.  By the time we finished the museum we were tired and hungry, so we drove back along the north side of the river toward Rochfort and stopped in Savenniers to taste wine at two wineries.  At the second winery, Clostel d Vault, the owners recommended that we go to dinner at la Croisette, so we agreed to let them call for a reservation for 7:00 p.m.     

Then back to the chambres to rest and we returned to la Croisette for dinner.  This time Suzette ordered gazpacho and I ordered a Salade Anjou and we split an order of calamari.  Suzette’s gazpacho was very fresh tasting, made with celery, cucumber and tomatoes pureed.  My salad was my favorite, frisee with a poached egg and lardons (fried chunks of bacon) and croutons garnished with alight vinaigrette.  We ordered a carafe of the house rosé for half the price of the bottle of Savvenieres the night before and I enjoyed it just as much.  I think the Loire rosés mix a little Cabernet Franc into the Chinen Blanc that gives it a little bite to balance the natural sweetness of the Chinen Blanc.

After dinner and another lovely sunset over the river, we went back to the B and B.