Best Western Hotel de Champagne Épernay

... were walking out with carts full of Cases of wine, not to mention all the cheese, fois gras, ham, mushrooms, and other french goodies that were up for grabs. We spent a piddly 5 hours drinking wine, and now have a much better "education" of French wine. But after a couple hours, food was definitely in order. Istead of opting for the 9 euro fois gras sandwich, we got the pate en croute, which we soon found out is not supposed to be eaten ...

... a local champagne cave, and then go to a local restaurant and do some sampling of all the different brands. <br><br>After all of that, it was time to wash our socks and undies. Yup, laundry day (or laundry 3 hours). So, not only are the unlocked internet signals harder to find since last trip, but the laundry places are also much more expensive. We did have a nice conversation with an American girl who was in France for six months to teach English. Although ...

... to some very nice gentlemen.<br><br>The next morning we actually woke up on time and although we were a little sluggish we really weren't that late to the train station. Finding the ticket booth was an entirely different story though. By the time we found the right ticket counter and waited in line we had 10 minutes to board the train we wanted to get on. Needless to say we opted for a later train. We bought a little pricer ticket in order to get to Reims around ...

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

... her credit cards in it.<br><br>We pulled off the highway and threw our belongings out of the car, searching everywhere for the wallet. But it was nowhere to be found. Mom thought it may have been stolen last night at the Eiffel Tower as at one point she looked down and saw her bag was open and wondered if she had left it that way.<br><br>We decided at this point there was little we could do but ...

... and process, how much patience one must have before tasting the final product!<br><br>I have to admit that I was a little impressed by Moet...but primarily due to all the glam of the family fortune. I'm sure the family heavily pressured its sons to continue the tradition...<br><br>So here's the rest of my pictures, varying from the tour, to a stroll in the park! <br>

... it was being left for good! We had asked at a couple of Metro stations to find out which station we needed to use to get to Reims, where we were to pick up our hire car. The consensus was that we should get the Metro to Gare du Nord. Having done so , we queued for about half an hour at the ticket office, only to be told that this was the queue for Metro tickets and that we had to go upstairs for the tickets we wanted. We found some ticket ...

Bonjour peoples ... we're back in France! We decided on a little bit of culture along the way to Paris, so we headed for Epernay, the home of Champagne. Unfortunately when we arrived that night, we couldn't find any camping (sound familiar?) and had to drive back 35km the way we'd come! After a nice night at the campsite we found (free wifi), we headed back into ...