Spring Festival: from soggy to successful

Daglan’s Fête du Printemps, or Spring Festival, this year turned out to be almost a replay of the 2018 version — as the day started grey and drizzly, and then improved dramatically in the afternoon, with loads of shoppers strolling throughout the village and cars parked just about everywhere.

In fact, my description of last year’s event had a title much like today’s posting — “A wet fête turns sunny” it was called, on March 18, 2018.

As for this year’s event, around noon yesterday (March 17), my wife Jan and I walked up to the village bakery, where we were to meet friends Suzanne and Mark and head for a lunch outside Daglan. Here’s a couple of views of what we saw, starting with just a scattering of shoppers, carrying umbrellas or wearing hoods:

Umbrellas were a wise choice.

There’s no doubt that there was a great assortment of plants — flowers, vegetables, shrubs, vines, and trees — for sale at various locations throughout Daglan. On top of that, there were vendors selling a wide variety of wares, including various food items and  local wines. Here’s a nice grouping of flowers in the main village square:

A beautiful (but damp) selection of flowers.

In any case, we drove out of the village feeling as if the festival might not be much of a hit this year, simply because of the weather. Our lunch, on the other hand, was a definite hit — it was the second time that Jan and I had eaten at Restaurant O Moulin in Carsac-Aillac, and we and our friends had a really delicious meal.

I give this restaurant a very strong recommendation, so if you missed my detailed review, please have a look. It was called “A river runs through it,” and it was posted February 12, 2019.

After lunch, we drove back into Daglan — and were delighted to see that the sun had come out, and so had hordes of shoppers and visitors. As I’ve said before, this is a fête worth continuing.