Hotel Le Bon Moine Reims

We worked our way all the way up to Reims, the heart of the Champagne region. While Reims does have a pretty cool cathedral and I'm sure there is some historic stuff, we came for the champagne. We followed the Rue de Champagne down through all the little towns and Epernay. Then as was our luck, the Salon de Vins festival was taking place, so over 250 vintners from all over France were there to let us taste (and buy) their best. Some ...

... a premier cru! The next tour you’ve probably heard of, Taittinger, was a bit more "factory-like" and repeated much of the same information we’d heard previously. They only gave us one sample of the cheapest bottle on the menu. The comparison may be best described with a beer analogy, Budweiser versus a locally brewed beer with limited distribution. My recommendation for anyone reading this who visits the champagne region is to take one tour ...

... around a corner – BAM! cathedral. Our group of 40 almost got hit by about 3 cars while we were looking at the outside because the roads run so close to the exterior.

I think this was my first cathedral interior that I’ve been in since we arrived in France. I’ve seen enough pictures and taken enough history classes to know what to expect, but you never get over ...

... and waited for about 10 minutes before the tour started. One of the amazing parts about the Pommery is that they not only house champagne in their cellars (or 'caves') but art is also displayed. While we were there a more modern artists had displays in many of the corridors as well as the cellars including a dress designed by the designer of the mini skirt and a race-car suspended from the ceiling.

Originally the caves were minbed for chalk that was used ...

... generally does not come cooked. So a little disappointing especially as the middle was a bit cold - yuk.

It was then off to explore the city and of course see how champagne is made. I did find it bizarre that a lot of the bigger Champagne house were in the main city as I had expected it to be like most of the wine farms surrounded by vineyards, but here we were in a city walking around unknowingly at first above some of the most ...

... onto the highway was crawling, and continued to crawl for several more minutes once we were on the highway.

We did eventually hit the speed limit and at our second or third toll booth, mom realized one of her wallets was missing. Luckily she had separated her many currencies into different wallets and the one missing was the one with a little bit of Canadian money. Unluckily it also ...

... of his stained glass work I saw in the Fraumunster in Zurich..wow...and these are still just as incredible. I was able to take pictures of these though so when I finally get to adding pictures all can see just how beautiful they were. He has a few more cathedrals that he made these seriously one of a kind special stained glass art. He was ...

... since there was barely enough room to put the food in the kitchen, there was definitely no room for decorations.  Therefore, we all traced our hands on the windows with dry erase markers and made turkeys out of them (Haha, it was me who INSISTED on the hand-turkey decorations, and the Germans thought I was NUTS!) The only non-obstacle: wine. In the end, it was all worth it! Very fun night!  Couldn't have done it without all the others!

... little place right on a canal, and then I beat Dave, no sorry thrashed Dave in Othelo (not the most exciting game if you don't know it). Today, well it was a long one, we drove across to a place called Colmar right on the German boarder, it is the start to the Alsace wine region and a small stretch of area called the thousand villages. We will attempt this tomorrow. It was a very pretty drive getting here, going over the ...

... was a bit sticky more flour was needed. James being James took it upon himself to get more flour - enough to pretend it was snowing on the toys that he and Emma had been driving through the playdough. The game was stopped shortly thereafter, two children were stripped of their flour-coated clothes and sent for a bath. "I'm hungry" announced Emma (a favourite saying at the moment) so the remaining pikelet mixture was cooked up for afternoon tea. As we had about an hour ...