Reims

On Friday, 8 of us traveled about an hour outside of Paris to Reims, the home of many champagne makers. It may have been my first real train ride (as opposed to NJ-NY), and I was impressed with the comfort of the seats. Being the obnoxious Americans as we are, we rolled onto the train with bags of food from the Monoprix (amazing supermarket I've mentioned before). The ride there went pretty quickly, and we arrived in the pouring rain in Reims. It must be noted that the trip wasn't very well planned, and we had no idea how to get to the hotel. We finally got in taxis and made it to our hotel of choice, Mister Bed. It was basically a truck stop, we had 2 rooms that included a bathroom much like those in the airplane. The hotel wouldn't have been bad if it hadn't been in the middle of nowhere, in the next town over (I don't even remember the name of it). We found a restaurant in a brochure in the lobby and decided it would be a good idea to walk into "town" which took about 30 mins. The first restaurant we saw was called "Buffalo Grill," it had a cowboys-and-indians theme and we had a good laugh about it. We decided not to be THAT American and chose a very nice Italian/French place where we had a corner to ourselves (probably so we didn't annoy the other customers) I really wanted pasta, so I ordered the penne with 3 cheeses, not remembering that I don't like French cheese (remember, tastes like feet?) nor alfredo-esque sauce. It had a bit of a feet-y twinge but it was pretty good nonetheless, the pasta was fresh. After dinner, we realized that "town" did not exist, so we walked back to the hotel in the cold night (note: it was much like the suburban/slightly rural south in America). We wanted to go to a bar, but there were only hotels. After getting kicked out of one restuarant because we just wanted dessert and drinks (which wouldn't be a problem in the US), we finally found a hotel with a great bartender who gave us the private champagne room with couches. Needless to say, it was amazing although the drinks were very expensive. I finally had a rum and diet coke (my favorite drink, lame, although not 3 in a row, it has happened), a refreshing change of pace from beer (ew).

The next morning, we took taxis into Reims for our reservation at the champagnery. We had a guided tour in English (although the woman spoke very quickly and with a very thick accent). We went into the "caves" where they keep all the bottles and it was really interesting and kind of scary. Look out for pictures. Unfortunately my camera battery completely died once we got into the caves so I only have a few pictures from that. At the end of the tour we each received a glass of champagne which was delightful. From there, we walked into the center of the city/town and had lunch, where I was lucky to find an outlet to plug my battery charger into (luckily we had to carry our travel bags with us so I had my adapter). We visited the Notre Dame of Reims which was very pretty, great stained glass, then walked further and got pastries at a famous bakery called Paul. The employees where very nice and the pastries amazing. That's basically all we did in Reims, it wasn't too exciting but we made it fun. I can see why Louise said it wasn't a good choice, but that's because she needs exotic safari adventures all of the time.

The metro has been very sketchy lately, for example they randomly shut down stations and the night we got back from Reims we had to get off because a few stops up a passenger was "gravely injured." When we walked past the station above ground there were police cars and ambulances. I imagine maybe someone jumped/fell infront of the train. I was very weirded out by that. I think because of the upcoming presidential election there has been some shady business. In Jaques Chirac's address last night he urged people not to be extremists. Hopefully that doesn't make the extremists want to be more extreme. Anyway, I have to go to class, I will post the pictures from this weekend later today.