Monday.  We are down to our last few days in Saint Aignan.  We slept in a little bit and had cereal and toasted baguette for breakfast.  After breakfast we had some errands to run -- we filled Yves' car up with gas and we took the recyclables to the recycling center.  

As you know, everything here is closed on Monday so we took a long walk all around Saint Aignan filling our hearts with pictures of the town we love so much!  We have truly had a most amazing experience here.  Here are some pictures David took around the square where we are living. This is our favorite wine bar, Aux Cepages. 

This is Douglas and Claire's house.  Don't you love the sign outside of it?  It was formerly a cabaret!  It looks so small from the outside but inside it is huge.  They combined two houses to form their house.

This is the Italian restaurant, L'Amarena.

Ohhhhh, Fun Doner restaurant.  This is where I had the good cheeseburger and fries!

This is the home that we visited two Saturdays ago which is being renovated currently and will be a gite.  It is quite large and has a very nice hidden courtyard/garden.  I mentioned in an earlier post that we met the new owner, Marc, and his wife whose name I do not know.  They hope to open in May of 2015.

The rest of these pictures are just random shots around the square so we won't forget how beautiful it was.

Monday evening we were invited to Claude and Christina's home for an aperitif at 7:00.  We were just about ready to leave to walk there and there was a knock at the door.  Claude had walked over to escort us to his home.  So sweet.  They are the kindest people you will ever meet and they live in a beautiful home.  Once again, from the outside their home wasn't huge but from the inside it was.  They have four floors and the bottom floor (basement to us) had a garage for 2 cars plus an entire room for storage or whatever.  Christina is a very good gardener and she had many flowers inside and outside her home.  

When we arrived they had wine and appetizers on the table for us.  It was beautifully displayed and we felt very fancy!  They had taken the trouble to go to Aux Cepages to ask Michelle what our favorite wines were and they had a bottle of each on the table for us.  We felt very welcome, that's for sure!

The conversation was interesting and taxing because, of course, our French is only OK and Christina speaks no English.  Claude speaks some English, which helped.  But the language was absolutely no barrier to our good time!  We found out that Claude is a champion billiard player and he has a regulation table in his home.  We also discovered that they both like to sing and dance.  They sang for us -- together and separately -- and they have beautiful voices.  They sang fun, rowdy songs so we could clap along.  

We ended the evening with champagne!  One of my favorite things.  It was delicious.  And home-baked Madeleine cookies that are cake-like and taste of almond.  Very, very good.

It was a delightful evening and one more reason we will hate leaving on Friday.   When it was time to leave, Claude and Christina both put on their coats and walked us home.  They could not possibly be nicer people.  Here are a few pictures from our evening.