Au Tambour Reims

... a hot pocket. It was very good, albeit messy; and went great with the Bordeaux that we had been trying. All in all, the Champage region treated us very well. But alas, our wine days are over. Now it is off to Paris to drop off the car and get back to the hostel living, metro taking, sight seeing routine. But at least we'll be doing it with some good wine for dinner. Here's hoping the rain that plagued us all week decides to take a break!

... inside the church. Chad and I were psyched to team up again with the audioguide; one machine, two headphones. That is until Chad wanted to hear all of the OPTIONAL extended detail which the guide offer, but allows people (like me) to opt out of. My favorite part of this cathedral was definitely the windows. The first sets of windows were reminiscent of the Ste-Chapelle windows in Paris, which I loved, and houses some of the most amazing windows I’ve ...

The next destination on our itinerary was the Notre-Dame of Laon Cathedral. My pamphlet tells me this is "one of the earliest Gothic edifices constructed in France," so there you go. It's a lot different than the famous Notre Dame in Paris, being a lot less ordered and therefore more “exuberant.” It’s on a site that’s a lot higher than the rest of town, so you get lots ...

... We originally asked about buses since I had read in my travel book that this was the easiest way to get to the Pommery quick. Once she found out our destination she asked if we had already made a reservation.... uh what??? A reservation, we didn't know we needed a reservation. She immediately picked up the phone and called the Pommery and booked us an English speaking tour at 3:15. There is no other way to describe this woman than as a life saver. She made our ...

... entrance to France is not the most scenic but it gets better as you get on the motor way and start to see some of the countryside. It helped that it was a gorgeously sunny day with only a crisp wind. You could see that Autumn was on the way as every now and then trees and bushes had a sprinkling of light gold and orange, making the drive seem more beautiful.

By lunchtime we had reached Reims our destination for the weekend. Reims ...

... on. It was already getting quite late in the day considering we still had more than five hours of driving ahead of us. We stopped only for food and in Rheims to check out the cathedral. We had planned to make a few trips along the route but we had also planned on being out of Paris a lot earlier in the day, and I have to work tomorrow, so we didn't get to have much fun driving through France.

... The bathroom was nearly as big as the bedroom and was recently completely remodeled, so that was a saving grace. I watched a little late night TV when Marisa was sleeping and I recalled that back in 1990 they usually had soft core porn on late at night on a national, over the air channel. Well, the times have a-changed. Now they show hard core late at night - the type with harsh lighting and worn out looking "actors". Really low production values ...

... I did not.  So come Saturday, when we couldn't find any turkeys, we finally settled on two chickens.  Obstacle two: "equipped kitchens" - a very loose concept.  For example, my apartment does not have an oven, just an oversized toaster oven.  Some of my other friends live in a dorm so they have an oven, but it is not very big.  So, we roasted and baked all the vegetables on the same tray that we cooked the chickens.  That ...

16/4-18/4 Ok we traveled on to Reims, the start of the Champagne region. Here we stayed at our first camper stop. This is basically a spot where you can park your campervan for free. They come in varying conditions, some have free water and grey /back water dumps. Some come with electric hookups which you can sometimes also get for free. The Place we pulled up in Reims was a car park at the back of a comedy club, it had free ...

Today Richard spent the day at RMS. For the rest of us our day started as normal with Emma wanting pikelets shortly after breakfast. After a feed of pikelets James did some school work - maths, printing, reading. Next we walked to the supermarket for my first time without Richard. Emma fell over half way there taking skin off her knee and hand so wanted carried from then on and round the supermarket. With Emma's knee bleeding our first stop in the supermarket was the medical ...