Sunday was a heavenly day.  The weather was gorgeous -- sunny with clear blue skies and about 82 degrees!  Here is the view from our bedroom window:

We were told that everything closes early on Sunday so we went to the bakery first thing. David said I had to order so it was my first time speaking French.  Let's just say I got by and ended up with two chocolate croissants, two almond croissants and two baguettes.  Just what we wanted!  I spoke hesitantly and slowly and the clerk spoke some English.  I am not very confident speaking French but we had breakfast!  

After breakfast we walked to the Tourism Office and picked up a map.  Then we went to the cheese store.  An entire store devoted to cheese.  Oh my.  The clerk there, however, spoke NO English and we stumbled a lot speaking French but we were successful.  We selected two kinds of cheese for dinner.  One was muenster and the other one was mystery cheese. The mystery cheese was moyenne (medium strength).  Both were excellent.  When we came home we looked up the French words for mild (doux) and strong (fort) which will be very helpful when we shop there again.  We also bought butter (beurre) which was delicious on our baguettes!

Then we walked across the street to the Super U grocery store.  We bought bottled water and Coke Light and crackers.  Also beautiful green grapes and black olives.  Everything we needed for a lovely French dinner.  Almost.  We needed wine!

There is a small store, Chez Effatt, just a few doors away from us that we wanted to check out so we went there to buy wine.  The owner spoke English pretty well and was very nice. He told us he would only be open three more days and then he was going home to Egypt for 20 days of vacation.  Our homeowner, Rachael, asked me to say hello to Effatt for her.  I did and he was delighted!  He showed us the local wine and we bought a bottle of white (blanc) for David and red (rouge) for me.  Then we were all set for our first dinner at home!

In the afternoon we took a walk around the town and along the river.  Many people were out walking and riding bikes.  

We want to ride bikes here too so we rented two from Natahlie.  She and her daughter "delivered" them to us in the late afternoon along with helmets.  Nathalie's parents celebrated their 60th anniversary yesterday so they had come from a family lunch celebration.  They were going to an exposition in a nearby building and took us along with them.  Apparently from 1957 to 1976 Saint Aignan held a parade every year and the exposition displayed pictures of all of the floats and bands, etc. from the parades.  The floats were hugely decorated with flowers -- much like the floats in the Rose Bowl Parade. Amazing!  There we met Nathalie's sister and her husband.  The woman who organized the exposition spoke very good English so we visited with her for awhile.  She works for the town and this display was just one of her duties.  

We returned home and watched some TV and had a glass of wine and dinner.
  

After dinner we read for awhile and then headed off to bed around 10:00 p.m.  Not quite used to French time yet.