As it is Paris in July theme, all things French, I thought I would tell you about the house we stayed in on our second trip to France as I have posted about the house at Condat on our first trip.
Our second stay was in the Loire Valley
in a beautiful little village called Montsoreau.
We stayed in the upstairs flat of an apartment where the owner lived in the flat downstairs.
The apartment was central to many of the chateaux on the Loire and by the time we left at the end of four weeks we had well and truly experienced all types of chateaux.
Our apartment was behind the Chateau of Monstoreau and we could just see the Loire from our lounge window.
The building below, L’Union, was where the locals gathered for a game of some sort of bowling on a curved wooden floor.
I will do a post at a later date, telling about our visit to the chateau.
The neighbouring village was Candes St Martin.
We were fortunate enough to be in Montsoreau when they had their antique market. What a beautiful setting for a market, on the bank of the Loire.
While we were in Montsoreau we had beautiful weather most of the time and enjoyed being there while the grapes were being harvested. We were given the opportunity to visit a vineyard and take part in the actual harvest. Our next door neighbour owned a vineyard and invited us to watch the grapes being harvested, squashed and put into the vats.
* An editorial note from my husband: “It was eight weeks we spent in the Loire Valley, not four.” I obviously thought the time passed really quickly.:-)
Gippsland Granny 
the apartment and town look so clean and white and tidy. really nice. I have always thought it would be interesting to see grapes being harvested and squashed …. how fun. an antique market on the Loire sounds really lovely too.
We had such a magical time there. Followed up by a trip to the U.K.