Quite honestly, this fortified castle doesn't really whip me into a verbal frenzy. The coolest part of our visit to the Angers castle was actually a medieval tapestry depicting the Apocalypse housed in what was once some Duke's quarters. The tapestries were terribly dense in symbolism and numerology, just like the Revelation itself. I would have been hopelessly lost and bored without the audio guide. With narration, however, bits and pieces of meaning were unveiled and unraveled (a little pun; no tapestries were harmed in the making of this sentence).
Even if much of the complex images and symbolism of the tapestry still remains a mystery to me, the work is remarkable simply for its size and skillful artistry. The simple fact that so many panels have survived the last six centuries is incredible!
From Angers, we drove on to Langeais (which actually rhyms with Angers, both pronounced (l)an-zhay). This castle is historically significant for the region of Brittany; it was here that Anne of Brittany married the French king Charles VIII, making Brittany part of France, where before it had been independently governed. In the castle, there was actually a movie + scene with (kind of creepy) wax figures that told the story of the marriage, which was for political reasons actually quiet a secret affair.
After our tour of the château, we lined up for a group photo. Want to see the really attractive people I'm with?
From there it was on to Tours, where we ate dinner and spent the night. Our dinner that night was particularly good. For desert, we ate a strawberry-basil concoction with orange cream. Who would have thought to put basil with fruit? Thank you, France, for making me think outside my culinary box. Yum, yum, yum.
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