Off to Saintes (11/9)

Gabard's and Poynton's just before leaving

We weren't sure how far we would get today because we didn't leave Louis-Marie and Danielle until nearly 3.00pm. We just had to stay long enough for yet another of Danielle's fabulous lunches.  The other reason was that Jill's iPad had frozen, (we had come to rely on it for chasing accommodation) so thinking that it was a problem with Orange, Louis-Marie drove us to a shopping centre on the outskirts of Cholet to try and resolve the issue. The salesman there established that it had frozen trying to send an email but he said that the problem was beyond him and that we would need to go to the main branch in the centre of Cholet. After waiting for almost an hour, the lady couldn't really help us other than to say it was bizarre, and she had not heard of the issue before. We decided to head into Bordeaux tomorrow to visit both Apple and Orange to see if it could be rectified. We drove as far as Saintes, and decided that that was far enough for the day.

Sunset on a church in Saintes

We found a hotel and settled in, then headed into town. We had time to explore before dinner, so we walked to tourist information hoping that there might have been a map of the town. No such luck, s o we set off anyway. Saintes is an old Roman town, and a Bronze Age settlement area as well. We found a sign to the Roman amphitheatre, so we followed the signs until we came to what looked like a cliff. As the signs seemed to have run out, we thought that we had found it and were not impressed at all. We followed some more signs down to a church, and decided that we had done enough for the day. For a Friday night there wasn't much open, but we found a little restaurant tucked up an alley which offered menu-de-jour. Another first for Jill - the chef's interpretation of a salad included a small black pudding sausage balanced on a potato and ham salad (there were other ingredients but we can't remember what they were). The black pudding was actually quite spicy, probably to make it more palatable. It wasn't unpleasant, but Jill didn't think she would be wanting another in a hurry. The dessert was delicious - a small chocolate pudding with praline ice cream and Chantilly cream. Jill opted only for entree and dessert. Allan had all three courses which he enjoyed as well.