Best Hotel 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!

... was pretty cool. Going on two different champagne tours gave us a good perspective of the local/non-commercial and the big time export one. We really enjoyed the Martel/local where we were able to sample three different champagnes. The caves however, in the more commercial one were under the archbishop’s quarters. They were dug out by the Romans and we were at 10 degrees C. Our last night there we had a wonderful French dinner. We all tried the escargot ...

... 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 ...

... spot which looked back on the town of Epernay and the surrounding vineyards to have our lunch.

It was soon after lunch that Ernest Hemingway came back to haunt us. One by one we fell victims to food poisoning and all pointed to those dodgy hamburgers. The drive back to the Channel Tunnel was a bit stop start and I felt sorry for Martin who had to drive us all the way home. We naturally got to see all the service stops on the ...

... 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.

-We drove through Reims on the way back to Maastricht and stopped at the Pommery estate for a tour of its cellars. It felt like we were spelunking in the underground cellars, which are more similar to mining caves, housing over 20 million bottles of champagne. It was even complete with riddling racks, though they don't use that technique anymore. After the tour, we had a tasting, which ended in purchasing four bottles that complete with the Pommery logo straws... weird french people.

... sauce that had mustard, lemon and tarragon. We had a bottle of Viognier white wine that was tres bon (hints of apple, apricots, melon for you wine folks), a mozzarella/tomato salad and desert. They treated our bottle like champagne and brought us a standing bucket with ice to keep it chilled. The French know how to treat a bottle of wine. Marisa had an amazing champagne sorbet - potent with enough bubbly in it that it couldn't completely freeze. I had ...

... to a muddy cross walk (where you had to look both ways in order to not be run over by construction machinery) into a parking lot, to then get on the sidewalk.  They also like to cover gaping holes with wooden boards.  If they don't have wooden boards big enough, they just put down the appropriate number, so they overlap, and wobble.  RI-DI-CULE! If Michael Hupy and Associaates only lived here....

... so we decided to take a bus and head over to that area.  We took a bus, got off at a stop, didn't really know exactly where we were, walked in a direction.  Another bad decision. After walking about a mile, we asked directions, and found out the street we were looking for was two miles in the other direction, no bus would take us there. So we walked. We looked for the address, and could not find it. Yep, lost again. However, it was only 3 o'clock and ...

... the traditional vendage luncheon we had at the pressoir and it is very enjoyable indeed. Conversation is a little more difficult for me today, although two Lanson staff (Pierre and Olvier), both of whom speak English, sit with me and we discuss the rugby and other things. Olivier also explains some details about the region from a wine perspective in French to the journalist and I am surprised (and ...