Un gîte à Angoulême

Can you believe how many towns there are in France that have names that start with an A? Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Auxerre, Amiens, Angers, Annecy, Albi, Antibes, Arras, and more. This post is about our plans to visit another of these A towns: Angoulême. Have you heard of it? It's in southwestern France and has a population of 40K+. That's about the size of Blois, the big town 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan. Angoulême is a city that has existed since Roman times.

I'm writing about Angoulême because Walt and I have decided to go there in October for an autumn getaway. It's just a three hour drive southwest of Saint-Aignan. We'll drive down there and spent four nights in a gîte rural (a vacation rental) just outside the city. I want to spend a day in Angoulême itself and a day each in the nearby cities of Limoges, Périgueux, and Rochefort, not to mention smaller towns and villages along the way. We'll leave on a Monday, stay four nights in the gîte, and then drive back home on Friday.

The pictures here show you some photos of the gîte that I pulled off the Gîtes de France organization's web site. This gîte is a free-standing house on a decent-size lot in a park-like setting that is entirely fenced in. If Tasha, who'll be with us, barks a lot, she won't be bothering anybody. There are three bedrooms and no stairs to climb. There's a bathroom and a fairly big kitchen, plus the main room with living and dining areas. Wifi. Television. All the comforts of home, and all for 95 euros a night.

This will be our first road trip since 2019. Angoulême and the other cities nearby are all places we've never seen before. We've never driven through them or even past them. Because the drive time on Monday and again on Friday is only three hours each way, we'll be able to do some sightseeing on those days too, making this a five day trip.