ANGERS, FRANCE

I just returned from a trip to Angers, France, and its vicinity, where I had gone for a wedding. We traveled there straight from Charles de Gaulle Airport on the SNCF TGV train (the super fast one). We were able to print our tickets straight from the Internet and just had to show the conductors the printouts (which were personalized) along with our passports. Angers is a beautiful city!--at least the parts we saw. There are fountains, statues, little streets with many, many brasseries and cafes, shops of all kinds, buildings that range from the 12th century St.Maurice Cathedral and the Chateau d'Angers (a fortified castle with parts going back even further) to the 15th century half-timbered Adam's House to newer Art Deco and Art Nouveau buildings to the very modern. The Chateau houses the impressive Apocalypse Tapestry, the longest one in the world.

Not far from there is the Chateau de Brissac (the only "real" chateau we had time to visit), very impressive (but cold that day)--lots of tapestries and paintings (and mounted deer heads). We had an excellent tour guide and were given "cheat sheets" in English so we could follow along. The family still lives there. We even got to taste some of the wine produced from the chateau's own vineyards.

We actually stayed at a very small hotel in the town of Chemille, the Capital of Medicinal Plants, about 34 km from Angers. It's a very charming town, though the famous Medicinal Plant Gardens had not really begun to bloom yet.

Besides the usual guidebooks and travel videos (look in the 914.4's), the Elk Grove Library has a couple of other books concerning this region:

Chateaux of the Loire (1982) by Christopher Hibbert (944.5 HIB)
Chateaux of the Loire (1969) With a pref. by the Duc de Brissac (728.82 DUN)