🔴 July 14 in Saumur, Loire Valley

🔴 July 14 in Saumur, Loire Valley

oh my goodness the soccer game somebody just scored welcome welcome to France welcome to Su in the lir valley I am uh taking you on an evening stroll tonight I hope you can hear me okay England is playing um against Spain tonight it’s the final of the Euro and I think just as just as I hit just as I hit live uh one of the teams just scored so we’re going to see who it was bour bour thanks for being here tonight it’s a lovely night in suur in the L Valley I’m glad you can join me I’m going to take you as I was saying on a lovely nighttime stroll if you’ll join me I hope it doesn’t get too dark at times but here in the heart of the former medieval part of town LA s Pierre St Peter Square we have one here too you see St Peter’s Church here the light is bright so we should be fine this is a crazy place tonight of course it’s July 14th but all the restaurants are still open lots of people and what they’re doing here is there is a screen you can see there is a screen on the right hand side and they’re watching the soccer game the foot as we say in Europe I’m going to try and get us to a less crowded place mer voila beautiful here’s a good restaurant for you if you come to uh to suu I want to enjoy some nice pastro food Leon and now that it’s a little bit quieter here I can show you the gorgeous facad of leges s Pierre St Peter’s Church very old church days back to the 12th 13th century but this facade of course was updated much later you can tell neoclassical lines probably 17th century as I recall it’s very easy to see when you come to suur that this Square here is a popular place for locals and visitors alike bonsi it’s surrounded by gorgeous buildings trees as well which is lovely there’s a great Market on Saturdays here in this neighborhood and like I said restaurants and bars Boni I’m glad to see you here thank you for joining me on July 14th the French national holiday temperatures are still pretty warm want to show you this thing they did here under the trees it’s lovely with all these uh colorful ribbons you know I like colors look how pretty this is and look at this scout it’s nuts you see the game is still going on I see the screen in the background over there so what I’d like to do is take you we are now in what would have been the lower part of town in the Middle Ages and uh suu was for a long time a wall City they were several generations of walls just like in Paris I’d like to take you to the upper part where I’m hoping we’ll have great views on the city even at night trying to show you here buildings are quite High we have a couple of really nice homes here half timbered homes cuckoo half timbered homes beautifully restored the styles are quite different but you can see they’ve done a great job with them and they’re your typical medieval homes and very high very narrow they used to pay taxes on the surface they occupied on the on the ground floor here and typically where this restaurant is today would be the shop Lop where the French word Lop you can see where the word shop comes from and then in the upper floors the family would live and they were all pretty tight pretty narrow those homes just like the one on the right here thank you for joining me if you just popped in this is Veron Vero France with Vero I haven’t done a live virtual tour for quite a while and I’m glad especially on Facebook so I’m glad that you’re here tonight I thought it’d be fun to do this again just like in the good old days when I live streamed every week between the French lockdowns during the French lockdowns in fact in 2020 and 2021 you know I have a YouTube channel where you can find the replays of all these tours where I took you around Paris and around France as well lots of people here tonight so July 14th in France you know it’s um it’s part celebration there’s um there’s a ball dancing in fact by the river so the L river is in this direction where I came from there’s a ball tonight with a live band playing right by the river uh so people do that on July uh 14th the balls can be in big cities on the 13th like in Paris like the fireman’s ball here’s a place where locals meet here you see Cafe do laille you can see this is a place for locals it’s got a TV too for the game hey Sandra good to see you yeah I know you just moved here that’s wonderful congratulations good choice so I’m going to take you uphill so this means you get to hear me breathe heavily this section here this little corner this Courtyard cool is called laa be o i l e you can see that old wall in the back well back in the 11th century there was a wall surrounding this part of town then there was another wall that was added in the 13th century the city kept expanding of course and then most of them were destroyed eventually same story everywhere but you can see traces of those medieval towns so I’m going uphill now now word of caution cell signal should be okay I have 5G all the way but it gets a fe sometimes the good thing about Facebook is that if we do get cut off I will hop back on as soon as I have a new signal so don’t despair if you lose me wait a few minutes and then hop back on and I’ll be on the front with their Facebook page and I’ll just keep live streaming for the next uh 30 minutes or so until I get to the top of this hill where I want to show you something look at those stairs going to get my workout tonight thank you for the Stars Marc I appreciate that thank you so much all right let’s go up this thing lots of young people Mercy thank you everyone I see your messages Bon fet naal okay when I was here a couple of years ago I live streamed going downhill I’m doing the opposite tonight I’m ambitious and I told you about this home it dates back to the 15th century and it’s been completely restored and rebuilt altic identical the way it was by the famed compion Judo Ed France they are still in today I saw them earlier they are the top Craftsman’s top Craftsman in France and you know they work on Notre Dam as well I wonder if I turn around if you could see it’s getting pretty dark here let’s see the sunet just over there you’ll see at least the silhouette of the house which is lovely look oh they just turned on the light did they hear me thank you compion Deo thank you very much thank you thank you for the stars all right so I have different options to go up I think I’ll just take this one doesn’t matter there are stairs and there’s also a a ramp now those of you who’ve been to suu before know exactly where I’m headed I need to reach a high point tonight because it is July 14th look at the Moon you see it and on July 14th in many towns there’s a firework firework show not in my city not in tour our mayor is against them they scare the birds on the lir river and he doesn’t want them so I came to suur in the hope I could catch one here and maybe I’ll be able to show you a little bit of it if I make it to the top in time they’re younger and faster okay we’re almost there you’re going to see better in a second so it gets dark super late in France in the summer for those of you who’ve been here you know this CU it’s uh what is it now almost 10:40 p.m. and the sun set barely 30 minutes ago and the days I know already getting shorter but it’s still bright enough here we go friends I made it so there’s a reason everybody’s going up there that’s because while a lot of people will be staying by the L River to catch the fireworks the brave ones have come here at the CH to see it from above and that is my plan for us tonight again if we get cut off at any point no worries I’ll hop back on feels uh very medieval doesn’t it we’re going through a it’s almost like a drawbridge in fact there is another one on this side on the other side you can see the steeple of the church we left earlier St peters’s do you see it on the left there and I see a bunch of young kids sitting on that little Hill on the left on the right ready for the show so suur so many good reasons to come to suur if you haven’t yet it’s small 16,000 people live here abouts but not too small it’s got lots of history and architecture it’s got great wine we are in The sua Vineyards all around us if you could see them in the day time suur is famous for red wines like the suur champ made with uh mostly with cabern FR it’s also famous for its sparkling wines whites and Roses great food H he wasn’t as Brave as we were was he now look at what we see in front of us look at this this is the Mighty chatau the this is one of the last Gothic castles in the lir valley as you know I’ve taken you to quite a few of them and you’ve seen them already a lot of our shadows in the L Valley are Renaissance style which means they came later they were old medieval fortresses that were eventually updated to be comfortable to be pretty nice living places with big Windows you’ve seen a lot of them in the L Valley but this one though it was heavily mod ified over time there’s been a shadow here since the 10th Century in fact this building right here in the dark behind me which is a restaurant now used to be a monastery at first this one little dark so this Shadow was transformed first we had the powerful Lords of bla who fought over the Shadow with the Lords of vju the famous fola aju eventually won you had the plantag dynasty you know there necropolis is not too far from here AB font I took you there recently on a virtual tour and you can uh watch it on my YouTube channel France with Vero in the 13th century a powerful French King Philip Augustus the Builder King you may remember him as the king who surrounded Paris with walls as he went fighting off fighting in the Crusades Philip Augustus got the chatow back brought brought it back in the Royal domain but then eventually it was the Jukes of Anu who developed it in the 14th and 15th century it’s fabulous I’ve been inside a few times there’s a museum inside and uh it’s a really beautiful chatau so if you get a chance the entrance is right here and it’s like a drawbridge it is a draw bridge you can kind of feel for what it was like back in in the day the moat of course is dry now look at that my hotel happens to be right below the chadow uh it’s my favorite hotel in suu it’s called an donju I highly recommend it sits in a gorgeous building the service is wonderful and what a location you can walk everywhere from there they have a parking lot as well swimming pool heated pool a spa wonderful things and is the name look at that Mercy Janet bfet bfet Lami now you know we celebrate July 14th of course our national holiday but it wasn’t always July 14th that happened only in uh 1880s but from that day forward this is when we started celebrating our national holiday on that date now what is July 14th in France well it doesn’t celebrate or commemorate the storming of the bastile which is why the French smile when people call it bastile day originally it did celebrate a uh Gathering that happened exactly one year after the storming of the Bastille in 1790 and it was a big celebration on the Shand de Mar where we have the Eiffel Tower today today the King was there representations of all the French were here the royal family and it was a bit of a Unity celebration and it sent out a Unity message so it was a positive thing and that is what July 14th celebrates Lafayette was there as well I’m going to walk around here so you can see the chatau a little better now in France we celebrate it’s not common that countries celebrate their national holidays with military parades as we do you know the big one in the sh of course today it was on Avenue fos because of the big mess created for the Olympics in downtown Paris they couldn’t use the Shan and especially the pl LA conord today so it was a little different but the military parade is really part of it it’s a bit symbolic it’s the Army the the armed forces that come and pay respect to the French government that’s why they always end at Plaza Concord where the president typically stands with his government it’s also a away for French people to admire their troops which they help Finance I suppose so we do the military parade we do the balls dancing and celebrating and you see entire families out look at that Sunset folks it’s glorious again this is the steeple I should say Spire steeple of St Peter’s Church where we started earlier this is gorgeous I don’t know if you can see but there’s quite a few people here I’ll get closer so you can tell it’s a lovely summer night we haven’t had that many so far it was very hot today it’s probably going to be the hottest day in the week look at all these people you see their heads right in the sunset more here everywhere that’s right Sandra the cad Noir the Su another thing Su is famous for you know this was a very uh successful uh in the 16th and 17th century this was a very successful Protestant City in fact in fact they called it the second Geneva and uh when we the 14 the Sun King decided to revoke a law his grandfather Henry IV had passed in favor of religious tolerance a lot of Protestants left France the hugenots and so that was a big blow to local economies especially here in suu and the city had to wait till the 18th century and at that point a minister of uh Louis the 15th the K deazel the count of schel brought here what would become a um very big military presence and that really helped the economy of the city the French Cavalry was brought here they built Barracks they built Stables for the horses and Su became a major Center in Europe for uh horsemanship in fact the national French School of horsemanship is in suu and the cad Noir that we just mentioned Noir for black cadra like a frame the cadra Noir is an elite core in fact those are the instructors those writers you see in the cadon Noir they are world famous are the instructors that work for that school that horsemanship school you have never seen so many beautiful gifted horses and the men who ride them as well so today like Sandra pointed out they were in Paris and they’re the ones who gave the Olympic flame to president maon and they were also here part of a show because the main role of the C Noir now is to really uh showcase French horsemanship uh in many public celebrations and shows um and and show the public what they can do so lots to do and see here in suu and if you are into military history of course there is a famous museum a museum of armored vehicles The Muse de BL which is a few minutes from this chatau it’s not very far from here so lots to UNC so we’re now waiting for the fireworks to start and it’s not far off because if I could read my watch I think we’re about 10 minutes or less 10 minutes away so I’m going to wait here because let’s see because because the lir river is down below I don’t know if I’ll be able to squeeze in people are waiting I’m going to lift my hand like this do you see the L down below right there and so on the left is a bridge leonar he’s named after one of the engineers who created bridges for Louis the 15th with the 15th bless his heart was kind of stuck between a very famous great-grandfather the Sun King enry the 16th who famously was executed during the French Revolution so very few people know that he did a lot for the kingdom Louis the 15 and one of the things he did was to develop to develop main roads and bridges all over the country you know that big bridge I’ve shown you in in tour called The Whistle Bridge or stone bridge it was built at about the same time that the Som Bridge was built and he created a school le bridge and roadways which is one of the top schools in France so the bridge is across those trees here uh my finger is right there so hopefully when the fireworks start we’ll be able to see it above I’m going to go to the left here so there’s a better View and I’ll let you watch the fireworks for a few minutes bonjour Lin welcome thank you for joining me today in Som lots of people here that’s right liberal frat you see the L River down below so the bridge is right there and they’re going to shoot either from the bridge or from the other side of the bridge so we should be uh this is a pretty good spot those are the brave ones the other ones stayed uh down below by the river banks of course a lot of restaurants are down there so that helps maybe it’s time to say a a little hello but it’s so dark I wonder if you’re going to see me let’s see no it’s going to be too dark okay I’ll switch it around I’m here in cognito so I came here this morning from two it’s about an hour’s drive away very easy to get to and I will be spending the the night at the hotel might be a little late to drive home and like I said there is no fireworks in tour this year so I thought Su would be a much better idea I’m glad I came here I am still wet Lisa that’s right I like that in the dark still wet in the dark pretty earrings you saw my earrings shine in the dark ABY that’s what you did all right let’s try to go down there see what happens down there I’m watching my step I’ll tell you that it’s pretty dark I’ll show you the shatow in the meantime ooh here’s a cool spot friends look at that I am going to stay right here you know why because that’s the bridge on the left with the lights on it you see and this is where they’re going to shoot the fireworks so we see the river this is great so now it’s time almost let’s see if they’re on time or not I’ll just keep walking and I’ll be back here yeah it was a pretty sunset when you have so such a nice such nice weather all day it’s really pretty okay so this is really cool because these walls here are slits you know protective defensive purposes so you can’t see anything this gentleman is climbing so he can see above but you you can’t see anything because this is where they would shoot arrows you see look at that super tiny and they’re the same all the way oh I won’t lose my spot in fact there is another spot over there on the right which I saw earlier today by the wall there don’t worry so the interesting part about the chatau is that it’s a big rectangle with four Towers but this entire section here is missing because it collapsed years ago and they never rebuilt it but back in the day this would have been completely closed off here as well I see a comment I’m trying to read it all right look at all the people on the grass I’ll go back to my little spot there are kids running around [Music] Mayhem well I’m not the only one here lots of bright people in s all right all right let’s see I think I shall stay right here when you’re short you’ve got to go to a higher position yeah I like it here what do you think should be fine the only issue is that it’s hard to zoom on Facebook I remember that much from our live streaming days I want it to start by the L River cuz it’s so uh it’s really the lifeline of this entire Valley and it’s brought so much Prosperity here but it would have been a little challenges challenging to come [Music] up so we’re waiting for the fireworks to start it should be any second now hopefully there will time the sky is gorgeous little peek at the Chateau before they start and the ball I heard down by the river is going to [Music] uh it’s going to stop for 15 minutes during the fireworks and then they’ll start dancing again so the party I I think is going to last a while ah ah friends here we go and here you are in somu enjoying the July 14 fireworks I hope the the screen shows you the colors so far they’re not super bright colors and I am switching hands the pigon just took off he was scared hey it ain’t the Out full tower but it ain’t too bad is it the gentleman said okay that’s it we’re done let’s go everybody laughed so when you do fireworks there’s always the part that everybody waits for it’s at the very end and we call it Le bouquet finale bouquet like a flower arrangement finale so everybody waits for that that’s when they go all out when I was a kid I only I only really waited for that that’s not true you’re welcome Camila glad you’re enjoying it wait the gentleman moved so I moved to no no that’s not that’s not the finale yet not yet you’ll know when it is I like to bring you with me that’s what I’ve been doing for years yeah got some blues now what a treat I haven’t seen a fire work show for a while who I like the big ones don’t you slowing down we don’t do a lot of tours at night so it’s nice to do this for a change that’s right Sharon and you know this is one of the perks too it’s that when you go outside Paris it doesn’t really feel very crowded even on a busy day like this oh boy I think they’re ramping up don’t you think we have sounds too pleas Mark I want my bouet finale I like the grand finale to I know it’s it’s hard on the Peds it’s very hard my arm is getting tired there you’re welcome Lisa I don’t think it’ll be much longer yeah it’s almost it’s going to wrap up so I’ll I’ll film Until the End might as well all right it’s ramping up I think pretend you are Lady Liberty Jackie yes that’s right she’s been holding that torch for longer than I’ve been holding this uh camera she must have developed some serious muscles I’m definitely getting a workout here we go here we go here we go folks the bouet finale at least I think so no I don’t know it doesn’t look strong enough for a bouquet finale I think they can do even better maybe they just had to take a little sip of that delicious sparkling suu wine there’re some pretty ones yes it is fun you right it’s fun when everybody’s on at the same time yes there be a replay Tracy on the France with bar Facebook page here we go it’s got to be it or not people are cheering down below they might sing mares especially if they have enough wine or beer by the end of the night I know it’s like you think it’s the bouet finale this oh I’m so glad you guys are enjoying this I mean it’s quite unique I’ve never watched fireworks in some so it’s Unique for me too W now is a good time to sing friends feel free there we go W my favorite part thank you for the Stars bouet finale yeah they’re cheering down there they’re happy voila bravo bravo bravo bravo wo let’s write let’s see if I can reposition this baby wooo yeah see I knew it was going to do that cuz it was all twisted while I was holding it sorry about that peek at the chatau one last time the Mighty chatau the Su I hope you’ve enjoyed the show I think you have based on your comments I really wanted to show you this that is why I came here today and now everybody’s going to go downhill they have different ways of doing this there is actually a shortcut to my hotel it’s super dark so I won’t be able to film it look at all the people look at that wo so I wish I could come on camera you know I like to do this at the beginning and at the end at least but it’s too dark you wouldn’t see me except for my earrings Abby so that’s not really fun well I want to say thank you friends I’m going to stop right outside the chatau I’ll go stand outside the drawbridge there it’ll be prettier to wrap up give me a few more seconds and I’ll take you there and um I want to say thank you for joining me tonight in Su looks like they’re all taking my shortcut it will be a crowd down that ramp well win some lose some sometimes the live streams work out great and sometimes they don’t that’s that I’ve learned over the years oh yeah I have a good spot to wrap up here I’ll do that in a second readjust the screen there we go because it’s really pretty wait I’m going to turn around and I’ll try and face the entrance there we go I’m going to go right here excuse there we go look at that look at that entering a medieval chatau chatau the Su beautiful perfect way to end this thank you so much for joining me friends continue enjoying your Sunday it was a great celebration in Su all day and I’m glad I was here and could share some of it with you I’ll be sharing some photos as well later don’t worry I’ll be careful as long as I’m not filming I’ll be fine

(Originally live-streamed on Facebook on July 14, 2024)

History, great food and wine, scenic sights all around: It’s hard not to go (and return) to Saumur, “the Pearl of the Anjou.”

I knew Saumur would be the perfect place to share July 14 celebrations. Saumur did not disappoint!

Join me on a night-time stroll from the former heart of the historic Medieval Center to the mighty Château de Saumur, the ideal vantage point to watch the (excellent) fireworks show that capped festivities in this peaceful corner of the Loire Valley.

To learn more about Saumur’s history, watch this virtual tour I filmed in 2023: https://www.youtube.com/live/iQ1Y19zAF6w?si=0klMY8vjhi52CTKK

Erratum: [19:07] The Duke (formerly “count”) de Choiseul served Louis XV in the 18th.

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