Reims with Orange

We started our day with a walk around the local neighbourhood with Nathalie's youngest son, Jean. Using a combination of "franglais" and actions best reserved for charades, we managed to carry on a decent conversation. He explained to us the history of the now defunct rail line that runs behind their apartment, showed us where he went to preschool, and where his godparents live. There were plenty of puzzled looks exchanged between the three of us, but I think we got the gist of it. 

Ashleigh and I then took a train to Reims, a city north-east of Paris, in the Champagne region. The city is filled with quite a bit of history. The Reims Cathedral (Notre Dame de Reims) was the traditional site of the crowning of the kings of France, and it was also where the unconditional surrender of the German forces was signed in 1945. 

We didn't have too much time to do any sightseeing, as this was just a day trip for us, so we focused on a few of the champagne houses in town. Our first stop was at Charles de Cazanove, where we did a tasting of three champagnes. The staff was friendly and informative, and we now need bigger suitcases to get  home, as we left with a few bottles of our favourite of the three.

Restaurants in the area have strange hours, often closing for an hour or two in the afternoon, so we found a local supermarket and grabbed a sandwich, a salad and couple Kronenbourg 1664's (quickly becoming a new favourite beer of ours) and had a makeshift picnic lunch on our way to the next champagne house. 

The second place we visited, G.H. Mumm (pronounced "moom"), is one of the largest champagne houses in the region, and was founded by three German brothers in 1827. Fortunately they offer both French and English tours so we managed to get into the English tour at 4:30. 

We travelled down through "les caves", the underground cellars that stretch over 25 kilometres altogether and learned quite a bit about the champagne-making process, which is surprisingly quite different from winemaking. 

We thought the champagne making process was just adding carbonation to their wine (which we never admitted to them). but it's actually an all natural part of the process. The cellars contain about 25 million bottles of wine at any given time, and some of them are over a hundred years old. We took some really classy photos with a giant champagne bottle before the tour ended with another tasting. 

Because all of the champagne tastings weren't enough, we went for happy hour at a local bar/convenience store (it was literally a bar on one half of the room and a convenience store on the other). The bartender suggested Belzebuth Rouge, a beer with a hint of cherries, that he served to us with a bowl of raisins of all things, and it was actually pretty refreshing, as it was another day at 30°C. 

Before we left, we had dinner outside at Le Grand Café, which was just a short walk from the train station. Although we both felt a bit rushed because we had a train to catch, we had a great meal of smoked salmon and steak tartar (c'est bon!). 

Tomorrow morning, we're going with the Poulain family to their country home in La Vallée for the weekend, which is about a two hour drive outside of Paris. It is supposed to be beautiful. The adventure continues!