This week, I needed an easy trip before a much bigger adventure.

“Angers or Saint-Nazaire?”

Both cities are less than an hour by train from Nantes and perfect to explore in any weather.

Angers won.

We’ve been there many times. Instead of heading to the massive castle as usual, we decided to step into whatever was open and free or cheap to visit.

The first door stood wide open. At noon, Les Halles Cœur de Maine, a fancy indoor market, bustled with people eating and drinking—oh, so French. The food looked amazing, but a bit expensive. Still a fun place to check out.

There are tons of bakeries in Angers, all of them selling classic viennoiseries (croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins) plus the local specialty, the pâté aux prunes. We stepped into many of them (free food porn!), checked out the Cloître et Abbaye du Ronceray and walked back to the castle, a handy landmark.

Now what?

Meters from the castle, I noticed a big red door with a sticker on the bell—”Visites.”

“Hey, I think we can get a tour!”

I rang the doorbell (“Insistez!” the handwritten sign said) and a lovely lady eventually welcomed us. She introduced us to the Maison canoniale Saint-Maurille, the former home of the canons (the members of the clergy). The “guide” herself lived upstairs; her family had somehow inherited this unique piece of real estate.

The final stop was the Musée Pincée, housed in a former Renaissance mansion. The current exhibition focused on colours and featured a lovely bric-à-brac of colourful artwork from all over the world. In the rooms upstairs, we discovered a collection of Egyptian, pre-Columbian, Japanese and Chinese artifacts—a fun change of scenery in Angers, the cradle of the Plantagenet dynasty.

And this is why I keep on exploring places—close by or faraway, I can always find doors to push or something I’ve never seen before.