Skipping Down the Loire

Catherine got her purse back!

When we woke up in the morning, we remembered the Android features to find my phone. Since it was in Catherine's purse, we realized that we might be able to use it to see where the purse was. Also, you can cause a message to appear on the phone to help somebody return it to you. In this case, we saw it move in the morning from a house on the outskirts of Angers into downtown and then stop near the city hall right beside a building that Google Maps labeled lost objects. It was the first time since right after losing it that we had hope that we would be able to get it back and not have to make a trip to Paris to get a new passport!

We went down for breakfast and lo and behold, our host had just received a phone call saying that the purse was returned to the lost and found in downtown Angers. Hurray! Feeling much relieved, we had breakfast with the other family staying at the gite. They were from Reunion Island and were visiting family in the area. The father was in the military and when he retried, they decided that they wanted to live on Reunion. It's a tropical island off the coast of Madasgascar that's a departement of France.

After breakfast, we loaded up our bikes and headed back to Savennières for most wine tasting. Our first stop was Coulee de Serrant, which was annoying to get to. Our first directions dead ended at some stairs, which I couldn't take the luggage up, so we had to go around and up a large hill. When we got there, they were labeling some bottles so the owner turned off the machine to do a tasting. Their wines are some of the most unique whites I've ever had. They are very minerally with a fair bit of acidity at first, however, the interesting part is that they are designed to age for at least 5 years and then, once you open a bottle, you want to decant it for 24 hours at least.  This allows the wine to evolve. It's the first time I've seen a dry, acidic white that's meant to be aged. Normally the whites you want to age are the sweeter ones like a Sauternes where the sweetness intensifies, the wine turns a golden color and the flavour deepens. The Savennières also starts to get golden and the acidic calms down, while the flavour seems to go on an interesting path that's richer and almost hay-like. The wines were fairly expensive, but also very interesting.

Along the bike path back to Angers

Our next stop right before lunch was to taste at Château d'Épiré. It's a 5th generation winery that's at a lower price point that the Coulee de Serrant but still making excellent wines that, interestingly are also supposed to age a bit. We had an opportunity to talk with the young winemaker (5th generation) since his English was quite good. Though they can make excellent wine, their pricing strategy had us scratching our heads. Their older wines were cheaper than their younger ones. They said that there were running out of room in their cellar and so were trying to get rid of some of the older stuff. We happily obliged.

The decor a the Cigale

For lunch, we stopped for a picnic beside the river between Épiré and Angers. It was Monday, so the tourists restaurants on the bike path were closed but there was a patisserie & grocery store open where we could get some bread and cheese for a perfectly cromulent meal.

After lunch, we arrived in Angers and started by picking up Catherine's purse. Everything was inside except for her Euro cash. Oh well, you can't have everything. Next, we found a tea house for Catherine to sit at while I went searching for a cheap piece of luggage. We needed something to put in our of our stuff because we had to get it to Nantes and we were not allowed to bring the luggage trailer on the train. So, we had to return our bikes and trailer to the shop in Angers. It took me a while. I went through 6 stores including a large grocery store that had other things, a sports equipment store that only had tennis and hockey gear (I almost bought a hockey bag), but I finally found a big wheelie duffel for 30 euros at a luggage shop near downtown that had both cheap things and more expensive samsonite ones.

The Opera House in Nantes. Across the street from Cigale.

We then returned our bikes and hopped on the train to Nantes. In Nantes, we dropped everything off in our hotel and went for dinner at the Cigale, which is an institution since 1895. It was a great experience! The decor was incredibly ornamental and you could imagine it as a salon lit by gas lights before electricity arrived. They even had their own tiles with pictures of their mascot, a cricket. They also move people through the restaurant like masters. The wait staff was super attentive and they had no trouble filling things up a couple of times on a Monday with everybody ordering 3 course dinners. Dinner itself was incredibly well executed and reasonably priced. The highlight was a restaurant's special that Catherine ordered. We weren't 100% sure what she would get, but it turned out to be akin to a steak tartare called allez-retour. It was a piece of beef that had been seared very hard so you ended up with almost a rare cook on it. Then, it was cooled down and chopped into nuggets. The pieces were then tossed with vinegar, shallots, oil and herbs and then served as a terrine with french fries and salad on the side.