After putting the kids to bed last night I decided to have a wander around. Yes it was 9pm so I wouldn't have expected it to be busy but the place was eerily quiet. I saw as many people as I did cats. I'm not a city girl but I couldn't imagine being somewhere so remote for too long. Anyway here's a selection of very random pics of the place along with the horse I fed as I was walking back. Sadly no chance of using the library as its closed for the summer but the bakery is open at 7am.

No surprises when I get back 45 mins later the kids still aren't asleep 😴😭

Since the kids messed about for ages again last night we've got a couple of grumps this morning. Al goes out to get pain au chocolat whilst I get them ready then I take everyone to meet the horse from my walk last night where we also meet a very friendly cat.

On arriving in Angers we've got just enough time to visit the castle which was very impressive.

They had a special exhibit about mermaids which Liliya enjoyed but she wasn't quite sure about some of the evil sirens.

We got to visit the world's largest remaining tapestry, titled the tapestry of apocalypse, which was about the book of revelations. We also visited the lovely gardens, got some nice views across the city and went into the room that acted as a prison.

They have installed a piece of art featuring 60 hands to represent the 60 prisoners that would have been squeezed in here together at a time.

It was then time for my cointreau visit (and one of the reasons I had chosen Angers as our stopping point en route to the campsite that will be our base for getting into Paris).

I do love me a cocktail after all. We had an hour on the tour followed by 45 mins cocktail tasting. They do one English tour a day so there were a few Americans, a couple of British families and some locals but the lady was natively English. The tour was very interesting going through the history of the Cointreau family, how originally it was a triple sec (and technically still is) but they wanted to be the best in the market so started using natural orange oil rather than synthetic flavours which triple sec can still do today (a test you can do is to add the liquor to ice, if orange oil is used the liquid will turn cloudy).

The family were very ahead of the times and one of the brothers was one of the first people to own a car which he used to advertise the product around France and Belgium. He stuck a huge bottle on the back which was a mobile bar!

There was only one female member of the family who over the years took interest in the business. She installed showers for the workers before running water was common in houses, and also gave paid time off and bonuses before they were legally required in France.

In a later generation one of the brothers was fascinated by the movies and he produced the first ever movie advert. It featured someone who had a stomach ache and wanted an aperitif, firstly he was offered wine, then champagne, both at which he turned his nose up at before being offered cointreau. He necks the (very large) bottle, started grinning then sees an image of a lady doing a strip tease for him, as our tour guide explained, it of course pre dated any rules on what you could say or suggest in adverts.

Today every single bottle of cointreau is made and bottled here, they merged with another company who made cognac in the 1990s and between them they also have brands of gin, rum and other liqueurs.

Another interesting display they had was of all the imitation bottles that have been made over the years (they have patented their bottle but when it first came out people weren't as bothered by patent law).

At the end of the tour we watched a short video about how they started branding the drink to be used in cocktails to expand it's popularity and now have around 315 cocktails that use cointreau with the top three being the sidecar, a margarita, and a cosmopolitan.

It was then time for the tasting, we got to try two cocktails and two shots. The first cocktail was a long drink called the cointreau fizz which was simply cointreau, lime and soda water over ice and was lovely and refreshing. The next was a short drink, the cosmo and our guide wanted 4 volunteers to make the drinks for the rest of the group, no surprises but the whole family pointed at me so that was fun.

We then got to try a shot of their cointreau noir, a blend of cointreau and cognac which had a real kick to it but then most 40% neat spirits would, she did say it worked well as a Moscow mule type drink with ginger beer and lime. The final drink was their pear and cognac spirit, less strong than the cointreau noir at 30%. It's would be amiss of us not to bring back a bottle of the noir since I've never seen it before and we also got a couple of the branded glasses and cointreau flavoured cake. Interestingly when in the still room they explained they had 2 different stills, the one for the spirit that went into the drinks and a smaller amount that made the spirit with 70% alcohol which is sold for those cooking with the product.

Our next stop gets us half way towards our campsite outside Paris in the town of Chambord. Yes another cocktail drink, sadly they don't offer tours of their factory but they do have an impressive castle which is where we get to park up for the night and will visit in the morning.