From Normandy to Chateau La Sebiniere

Woke up to a sunny day and we were on the road by noon. On the way to our Chateau, just outside of Nantes, we stopped at a small Brittany village called Fougeres. Our Guidebook mentioned that it was worth a visit for the Chateau and old town. We arrived on the outskirts of the old village and parked the car. A few minutes walk and we had a gorgeous view of the walled Chateau and the old city just outside its gates. We walked down into the village and had a look around. It is a very pretty little village and we were happy to have stopped as it also gave us a chance to stretch our legs.



Walled Chateau and Old City


Old City Buildings



We were headed to a small village just outside of Nantes called La Pallet. We were making excellent time and expected to arrive just after 4:30. We took the ring road to bypass Nantes and head for our village when the traffic stopped. We crawled along for about 10 minutes and passed a group of police. We went into a roundabout and to our horror our exit was blocked. We decided to go into Nantes and try and find another route. Big mistake. We later found out that Nantes was hosting the France – Fiji Rugby World Cup game and the place was heaving with tens of thousands of people trying to make their way to the game. After about 90 minutes we managed to get ourselves back to the roadblock where we started. We stopped traffic and asked the police officers for some help. They did not speak English but we did manage to get them to understand the village we needed to get to and they gave us an alternate route. Why I did not do this in the first place is beyond me, but at least we were back on our way. 45 minutes later we turned into the driveway of our Chateau. It’s a beautiful place and very peaceful. It’s in its own woods and backs onto a vineyard of Muscadet grapes, which is the wine of choice in this area.

Chateau La Sebiniere

Our Room at the Chateau

After cleaning up we went to the local village (Clisson) for dinner. We arrived into the centre of the village and it was packed. They were having a festival. We went to a couple of the restaurants that our host had suggested but they were fully booked. We ended up at a very unique restaurant that specialized in Crepe Dinners. We had never seen anything like this before. They serve the food on top of a bucwheat crepe, including salad. Apparently its a specialty dish for this regin. Rita had the Alsace Crepe and I had the Raclette Crepe. It was actually very good but still looked a bit strange.

Rita and Alsace Crepe Dinner (Buckwheat Crepe, salad, baked apple and sausage).