Photos

This is the castle gate (and you can see a little part of the castle behind) in Saint-Florent, Cher. This castle is beautifully situated on the bank of the Cher river, surrounded by a little charming park. Nowadays, it's a home to St-Florent's Mairie.

I always go through Saint-Florent on my way from Chateauroux to my beloved Bourges. The first trip was kind of special - let me tell you the story:

I was in France with my friend, and we both wanted to practice our drawing before exams to landscape architecture schools. We decided to visit Bourges one day and on our way there, we noticed a beautiful building standing just by the river. Of course, we stopped there to see the castle and decided to stay for few hours to draw some parts of it. We sat on the castle stairs and began to draw the gate from that point. It was about 2pm and, as you probably know, it is the hour when the French go back to work from their lunch break. So, while sitting on the stairs, we met all of workers coming back from their "dejeuner". All of them stopped for a while to watch us drawing and some even told us a few compliments. Suddenly, a man came out of the building and invited us in, introducing himself as the vice-mayor. He showed us every single room in the castle, introducing us by name to every single person working there, the mayor himself as well. He even found keys to the tower and let us go up to see the view. After all that he said we are always welcome to Saint-Florent and gave us his address card in case we need anything.

Believe it or not, we were both totally shocked, as this kind of hospitality is not usual in our country.

(By the way - we had many adventures because of this drawing, but this one is absolutely the most pleasant one)