Our journey through the Loire Valley has begun. The Chateau de Angers was the first of the many castles we visited. The Chateau de Saumur was next.

I remember back in 1990, two friends from Manila and I were touring the Benelux countries. We started out in Amsterdam which was our base. We rented a car then proceeded to LuXembourg, then Belgium and finally Dusseldorf in Germany. One night, it got too late and we had not booked any accomodations anywhere. We were in Belgium then and we had just passed by the Hotel de Ville of some small town. We went round and round looking for a place to stay. Finally, I blurted out in desperation, "Why don't we just go to the Hotel de Ville?", thinking that it was a hotel just as the name said. My two friends agreed. We drove back to where the Hotel de Ville was but we were surprised to see it closed and all dark inside. We didn't know then that the Hotel de Ville meant City Hall.