Friday May 4, 2018           posting                 Chateau Chaumont & Orleans– Le Mans – Nantes

Thursday April 19
Le Mans is close to the Loire River Valley which is famous for the opulent chateaux that were built along the river.  We picked the Chateau Chaumont because it is listed in Pick Steve’s book, and it was pretty close to Le Mans.  It had some interesting art installations, and a gallery of modern paintings.  I missed the gallery taking photos, but Sue even took a few photos, so you know they were good.  I was going to include them in the album, but you know Sue, she deleted them.  It was an interesting visit, but I don’t know that I need to see another one.

Then we were off to Orleans to see another copy of a La Tour painting.  Sue has just about had enough of La Tour, especially copies, but she is humoring me.  We saw the La Tour and many other paintings.  We are running out of steam, this holiday traveling is tough on senior citizens, so it was back to Le Mans to recover.

Friday April 20
We stayed in Le Mans so no driving today.  We visited Le Mans’ Saint Julian Cathedral.  It seems just about any decent sized city has a Cathedral.  St Julian is not lavishly decorated, so not as many photos as usual.  It was a short walk to the Musée de Tessé.  They have a copy of a La Tour.  I should point out that there are about as many copies (~40) as there are original La Tour paintings (̴~40).  Many of his paintings are only known because of the copies.  We have seen 22 of the originals and 15 of the copies.  I started looking for his paintings because there are only 40 and only about 5 are in private collections or in places we will never get to, and I need a hobby.  Anyway we saw the painting, and then went and had a nice lunch.

Saturday April 21
Today I returned the car to the drop off place near the Nantes Airport, Sue stayed in Le Mans and got ready for our train ride to Paris on Sunday.  I would take the train back to Le Mans.  There was a train strike this month in France.  They do strikes a little differently.  The unions give a schedule of the days they will strike.  On those days there is a much reduced schedule of trains.  We had planned to take three trains long before the strike was announced.  We got very lucky, on the three days we needed to take a train the unions were NOT striking.  So I only had a little trouble finding the drop off place, but I did find it.  Then I caught a bus from the airport to the train station in Nantes.  Then I walked about 10 minutes to the Nantes Musée des Beaux-Arts.  There are THREE original La Tour’s at this museum.  I booked my train ticket to give me enough time in case something went wrong.  It turned out that I had about three hours to kill at the museum because I dropped off the car a little early and nothing went wrong.  The museum wasn’t crowded, which is pretty typical for museums that aren’t the Louvre, Prado or the National Gallery.  I got a lot of attention from the attendants as I strolled around the museum.  I don’t know if they thought I was up to something, or they were just checking to make sure I was still alive.  I eventually went to the train station and sat around for a while before my train arrived.  The train ride took about half the time it took to drive.

We went to Mass Saturday in Le Mans.  We walked to church and got there early, so we sat in the back.  A man brought his bike into church and locked it up.  It turned out he was the priest.  We assume that this church doesn’t have its own priest, and the diocese sends priests out to the several churches in the city.  A couple of ladies came up and told us to move up.  One lady told us that the church was originally a hospital built in 1923, the year she was born!  She was 95 and spoke excellent English.  Sue thinks she was probably a teacher that would be one reason she spoke English.  After Mass we went to the Washington City Bar across the street from the church.  The owner was a young man who of course spoke English.  The menu had many hamburgers named after US Presidents.  We never did find out his connection to Washington.  This is what happens when I have time to write, I run on and on, so I’ll stop now.

 I have not re-posted the albums for these days, so you'll have to page down to get the album for each day.