Travel Beyond the Clichés While Looking Back In Angers
There I was in the local newspaper in a picture borrowed from the web and a paragraph hailing me as “a globetrotting American writer with a new book out entitled Travel Beyond the Clichés.”
The Loire Valley & Surroundings
And what a rich and stunning valley it is! The Loire Valley is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to the quality of its noble and royal architecture (the numerous chateaux), its historic towns (Blois, Chinon, Orléans, Blois, Tours, Chinon, Saumur, Angers) and the “harmonious development of interactions between human beings and their environment [e.g. vineyards, gardens] over two millennia.” The Loire as explored here flows through two administration regions, Center-Loire Valley and Western Loire (Pays de la Loire). There’s much else to discover in these two regions: the cathedral towns of Chartres to the north and Bourges to the south, Le Mans in the rural department of Sarthe, the upbeat city of Nantes, and a portion of France’s Atlantic coast with the resort towns of La Baule and Les Sables-d’Olonne (Vendée) and the islands of Noirmoutier and Yeu.