Cities with a charming touch of decadence are my favourites: Lisbon, Porto, Budapest, Berlin back in the 90's– Angoulême, in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Southeast of France, has been in 2018 added to my list of no-postcard cities, rare places where one can enjoy the kindness of their inhabitants, the total absence of stress and rush, the excellent food and drink, and the forlorn, irregular architecture.
Angoulême is known as 'the city of comic'. For almost 50 years the Festival de la Bande Desinée is having been celebrated here in January. But I found the spell of this city in the whimsical buildings that evoke Jacques Tati's apparently uninhabitable and lyrical architecture.
There have been many other pleasures discovered in the place. One of the greatest drinking enjoyments of this summer's been to have a bottle of Petit Chablis in La Cave (13 r Ludovic Trarieux), a wine bar where they sell wine per bottles that you can bring home or, much better, enjoy over a wooden board in the middle of the street keeping it cool in a shared with the other clients gigantic ice bucket.
An unaccountable number of churchs populate the town. Numerous bells toll every hour, half an hour, even every quarter of an hour to remember you with meridional accuracy aperó time, lunch time, dinner time, and the time to go out for having a beer with friends. La Souris Vert (1 Rue Massillon) is my favourite place to have a couple of pints of La Chouffe, an excellent blonde belgian beer. The regulars are usually ready to chat with strangers.
Limestone gives its characteristic colour to the city. Its toughness. You feel safe in the plateau, the upper area of Angoulême, high and defensive but with soft rounded corners.
If we descend from the plateau, the high city, we will find the silent river Charente. From this point we can see how high we were before coming down the erratic stone stairway, enjoying the sudden greenness that surround the walled town.
By the river we'll just be disturbed by some occasional swimmers, a fellow who's usually in a near spot angling, the buzz of July's afternoon heat– Oh, and maybe by La Reine Margot and its civil captain who salutes when passing by.
