Campanile Bonneuil Sur Marne - Petits Carreaux Bonneuil-sur-Marne

... 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 ...

... are or what the lessons teach, but the sheer enormity of the structure and the beauty of the art gives me the same sense of awe and humility that the stories themselves are supposed to convey in the first place.

In the Notre Dame de Reims, there is also one small gem of modern art. Stained glass windows from the Russian-French artist, Marc Chagall, were installed in the axis of the cathedral’s apse in 1974, and they added an almost dreamy ...

... for the day would include seeing the cathedral as well as atleast one champagne tasting. After consulting our handy travel books we decided on the Pommery champagne caves and possibly one other. Our goal was to set out around 9:30 am to buy tickets at the station for the 10:25 am train. Well... that didn't quite work out.

The night before was a classmates birthday so we celebrated for a little while with them before heading to a local (within 5 minutes ...

... list I was all ready to go, wondering where they would be taking me. I was like a little child at Christmas when I was told we were off to France to the Champagne region. What a great way to carry on celebrating my birthday --- with lots of sparkles in my glass :)

We effortlessly crossed the channel in our car through the Channel Tunnel Within 35 mins of having driven our car onto the train we were in France. To be fair 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.

... and process, how much patience one must have before tasting the final product!

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...

So here's the rest of my pictures, varying from the tour, to a stroll in the park!

... silence...surely not as busy nor loud as Paris!

The dinner created a bit of a problem...

Apparently there was a misunderstanding regarding the dinner; the owner thought he'd be providing us with dinner, but we decided we'd cook our own or find a nearby restaurant. By the time this was all sorted out, we realized that we had only brought 1 kilo of pasta, 2 jars of asperagus ...

... meeting in Reims, its capital. The famous cathedral of Reims is known for being the location of coronations. I know, "once you've seen one cathedral, you've seen them all!" Yeah you could say that...but I was rather impressed by the "fairly recent" stained glass windows by a foreign designer located in the back of the cathedral.

Reims was just a stop on our tour: a quaint city, not too big but not too small.

... showed the other locations of Buffalo Grills. My what a shock, there must've been 100 or more locations in France, a few in Spain, some in Belgium and there may have been a few more in other places. Who knew the French love American meat that much. ;o) After our gourmet American meal we went back to the Etap, watched some French American Idol or "Nouvelle Star" as they call it (it's their own version with cheesy French singers) and went to bed.