Day 10: Angers

I was up first this morning having had a bad night!   I was woken at about midnight by someone trying to open our front door followed by various people coming home late and making a noise in the corridor outside!   I was the one to go and collect the bread from the baker three doors away and we had breakfast and planned the day.  First stop was to check out the café Peter had seen online and it turned out to be the one we have been passing on a regular basis at the corner of the road.   We marked it for supper later.   We went to the grocer opposite and brought some walnut vinegar, which makes a great dressing and is very hard to find at home...and some greengages for our picnic on the way back to Calais.   Then off with the map to find the sights.  We started with the Opera house, which turned out not to be open, but we happened on a student demonstration of some kind - perhaps to do with the start of the university term.

The work of David d'Angers

At about this point we realised that we had been too optimistic about the weather and needed to go back to the flat for jackets.  We took the tram using the free tickets that came with our museum passes. We warmed up first with a cup of coffee in a café and then hopped back on a tram.  We wandered back again in the general direction of the centre and came across a flea market where we managed not to buy anything!   Then we realised we were getting near lunch time so we explored away from the centre.  Peter was quite keen on going down a particular street which I thought didn't look promising, but he was right.   We found a little old fashioned Italian restaurant and had an avocado and tomato salad followed by the best tagliatelle we have ever had - and a huge portion to boot!    We had thought to follow our meal with an affagato but we didn't have the room!    Then to the Musée des Beaux Arts which was a confusing building with a strange layout and a plan we couldn't follow.   At one point we got 'told off' for going the wrong way round the museum and the security woman followed us everywhere!   It wasn't very relaxing.   From there we went to the David d'Angers exhibition which contains the plaster casts of statues and busts of the famous by a sculptor called David.   It was housed in an interesting building and we learned a bit about the carving and casting process.  We took a rest over a cup of lemon tea in a small tea shop.

The castle and the drawbridge

Next stop was the Chateau and the Apocalypse tapestry.  It was vast and wasn't easy to understand until we saw the film just off the gift shop, which is where we should have started.   That was just about enough for one day and we wandered back for a bit of a rest before going out for dinner to the Gustave on the corner where we had a good meal.