The castle at the end of the street

Here's another throwback photo. This time we set the WABAC machine to winter 2004. The place is Vendôme, a city of about 17,000 people, the second largest city in our département after Blois. I haven't been there much at all, even though it's roughly an hour's drive from Saint-Aignan.

Taken with Ken's Canon PowerShot Pro90 digital camera in 2004.

What you see at the end of this street is not really a château, but part of one of the city gates that faces a bridge over the Loir (no "e") River. It's called the Porte Saint-Georges. The gate's origins are in the 14th century, but most of what we see is from the 16th. Vendôme has a picturesque city center and I should go back one day in better weather and explore it.

Lest you think I have an incredible memory (which I don't), I did some sleuthing on Google Maps and Google Earth to figure out what this place is. I knew approximately where we were when I took the photo, but I didn't remember what it was until I looked it up. And one of the cool things about digital photography is the meta-data, the fact that the camera records when you took the photo, what settings you used, and what camera you were using. Today's newer digital cameras can even use GPS to record precisely where you took the photo. And maybe what you were wearing at the time.