Poitiers…. and a birthday to celebrate!!

To add to the Church bells, which are now just above us, we have the incessant ticking of not one, but two clocks!! Wide awake at 5am!! That gave me the opportunity to put together as collage of my most wonderful hubby and best friend and to be the first to wish him a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY 💕🍾🎂🍷🎁

That done it was after 9am before we surfaced… of course he got up and made my tea etc 😂 I’m spoilt! Also needed to book somewhere for tomorrow night as the place we had emailed hadn’t replied.

As we were leaving the house they were discharging water from the barrage de Roche… funny enough when we came back there was more being released… little amuses the innocent!

There is so much to see and do around Poitiers we hardly touched the surface of it. If you are interested in reading more here are a few links you can explore….

https://about-france.com/cities/poitiers.htm

http://m.poitiers-tourism.com

Did you know… Students make up 25% of the population in Poitiers!

Here is what will make our memories:

The “explorers” who arrived at the tourist office the same time as us and who we saw later as they set up camp in front of the Hotel de Ville

The Hotel de Ville…. Absolutely stunning in the sunshine. A beautiful building from the Second Empire.

Notre-Dame-la-Grande… Built in the 11th century, it was not until the 12th century that it’s famous, meticulously sculptured facade was constructed to extend the nave.

The Roman ruins…. We nearly wet ourselves when we got here!! They even have their own post box 🤔

Lunch… Paul swears by Lonely Planet and they had suggested that La Serrurerie was a place to lap up local life in an industrial styled lounge restaurant. The service was swift and they certainly catered for a very eclectic cross section of society – there were the tourists, the ladies who lunch, the business man catching up on the news with his paper and the old man in for a bite to eat…. We elected to have the formule du midi

The Palais de Justice… Today it houses the law courts but nearly a 1000 years ago this stunning building was the seat of the Counts of Poitou.

The Square de la République… Only because I couldn’t get a photograph of it without people and I thought the blue and red posts to the side would make a great replacement for our peace walls!!

The guide dogs being trained…

The people going about their daily life…

The beautiful streets…

There are just so many…. including the Irish & Scottish products shop!!

With the roof down we headed back through Adriers and then took a walk in to the town square to have an aperitif…. only to put the world’s to right with a man from Manchester who has lived here 22 years; a couple from Aberdeen and her brother from ‘south east England’ who’s parents have had a house here for over 40 years!! The people one meets are very interesting when one takes time to engage…. And the barmaid didn’t measure the gin (Gibson’s) to my advantage 🍾🤗🤣

Pictures from Adriers…