Leesa And Alex

On Monday I got to meet fellow American expat blogger (and cupcake princess) Leesa and her French husband Alex. They were in the Loire Valley visiting some friends and had time to come down to St.-Aignan for a short walk and a coffee before heading on to their next adventure.

Alex and Leesa on the terrace of the château de St.-Aignan.

I took Callie with me to meet them. Callie doesn't have a lot of experience riding in the car and walking around in town, so it was a good opportunity to improve her skills. And Leesa had mentioned that she'd like to meet the famous Miss Callie. How could I refuse?

Leesa and me.

Since it's February, it's cold. That makes being outdoors a little bit of a challenge with coats, hats (Alex and I each sporting our baseball caps, one from each coast), scarves, gloves, cameras, and dog. But the temperature was above freezing and there was no wind or precipitation, so we did all right.

Leesa and Alex in the café - it was nice to get in from the cold.

It was really great to meet them both. We walked around town a little, to the main place, to the church, and up to the château. Alex noticed that some stones had fallen from two parts of the château - it must have happened during our big windstorm last week. The stones lay broken on the ground where they fell and the areas were roped off. One of the portions that fell was a beautiful sculptured window element from the renaissance wing of the castle.

Cupcakes and cookies made by Leesa. Yum!

We stopped in a café and had, well, coffee, and chatted for a while. Then it was time to say good-bye. Leesa and Alex headed off to visit the Clos Lucé in Amboise. I'm sure there will be photos on her blog!