Tuesday, May 15, 2012

To Avranches and Château Fougères

We went out for breakfast, which we'd been doing all week. The hotel offered an in-house breakfast that we tried the first day, but it wasn't to our standards. Any café that opens in the morning offers a fixed-price petite dejeuner of café creme (espresso with a side of warm milk), jus d'orange (a big glassful, usually from a bottle but at our favorite spot near the apartment in Paris it was fresh-squeezed behind the bar), and a croissant. For two, this morning, €13.80, a couple euros less than the hotel and better quality of everything.

Then back to the hotel, pack up and pay the bill and off for an hour's run down the motorway to Avranches. The room wasn't ready at 11am so we continued on another 30km to Fougères.

On the way we caught a distant glimpse of where we are going tomorrow.

This side trip was to see what the guidebook said was "a magnificent medieval castle worth going a long way out of your way to see." And they did not overstate. So get your medieval on. Chain mail? Sword? Shield? Go.

Southern face, the towers are two generations of keep.

In the fore-court, a school day-trip gets oriented.

Northwest wall with damsel.

Inner courtyard, one of the keeps.

Back-lit banners, just because.

Our hotel in Avranches is a cut above the last two, and has an in-house restaurant with a respected chef. So we dined in. It was an excellent meal — not entirely sure what we were eating (no English menu), but it was all delicious. But it took two hours from sit-down to get up. Not bad service; it just takes that long to choose, serve and properly enjoy a three-course meal here.

No comments:

Post a Comment