September 7, 2024
Day 5 - Rest Day in Angers
No cycling - just being tourists
We skipped breakfast in the hotel and had coffee and muffins at Starbucks across the street. We were out early, retracing part of last night’s walk as we followed a blue line painted on the street. We learned that the blue line is the tourist circuit of downtown Angers, and that it would eventually lead us to the tourist office. Which it did.
On the way, we enjoyed the early Saturday activity of the city. Angers has lots of nice little plazas and lots of pedestrian streets, which always makes us happy. Things seem quite a bit more prosperous here than where we live. All the storefronts are rented, the streets are clean, and there are lots of shoppers about.
I mentioned this in yesterday’s journal, but it’s worth repeating that we really enjoyed the way that Angers has made different eras of architecture all work to form a kind of harmonic fabric of the built environment. It looks random, but I have a feeling that there’s some serious urban planning and architectural review going on behind the scenes.
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After completing the walking tour, we stopped off at a Paul shop for one of their great sandwiches. We then passed by our hotel room for a quick break and some feet-up time. Then we headed back out to tour the Chateau of Angers. This was the seat of the Plantagenet family for multiple centuries. It also houses the Apocalypse Tapestry, which was huge and amazing.
Since we have a fibre enthusiast on this tour, we spent quite a bit of time investigating the Tapestry. The self-guided tour of the castle is really good, too, for those who are not seriously into 14th century tapestries. You get to walk on the walls and everything!
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Our weather app Windy showed us that some serious rain was headed our way, so we ducked into a coffee shop to recharge and rest our legs. We then sprinted to the Beaux-Arts museum, where we waited out the storm by checking out the 3 floors of painting and sculpture. And a special exhibition about fabrics in Dutch painting in the basement!
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By now the sky was bright blue. We had just a few minutes before 1800 to check out the last item on our list, the Galerie David d'Angers. It houses a collection of sculptures from a famous artist from Angers. But more importantly, it’s housed in a really cool building - an old church with a modern all-glass roof. The space is stunning!
Then, once again back to our hotel room for some feet-up time. By this time, we had walked almost 11km. On our rest day!
For dinner, a local sushi place looked good. It was a short walk to Tokyo Foch, and the sushi was excellent. A great finish to a great day.
Back on the bike tomorrow!
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