Residence Palais Congres Épernay

... 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 ...

... time like we planned so no harm no foul. After a snack in the station we boarded our train and we were off to Reims!!<br><br>Reims is a very small town that is probably only a few miles wide. After getting off the train we walked through a park and were suddenly on the main boulevard in the town. Many of the streets are reserved for pedestrian use only and so it happened on the day we were in Reims that a festival was going on in the middle of this very wide ...

... br><br>The channel tunnel trip back was not as smooth as the crossing over as we were delayed for a couple of hours - made worse by the fact that all we wanted to do was have a cuppa tea, slice of marmite toast and climb into a warm bed. <br><br>Was it a good trip? Naturally - selective memory is a great thing, especially when my most fond memory is watching those delicate bubbles escaping to the top of MY champagne glass :)<br><br><br><br>

... 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.

... before the 8:30 start. We had expected to pay 3 euros per ticket, but were told that tonight was free; we think it might have been a dress rehersal. We had time to admire the lovely old theatre, which looked as though had been well restored - for example, the seats were near new. We were surprised to see the number of people in the theatre with cameras, and even a video camcorder - definitely allowed in performances in Australia! It was a strange show, with three ...

... tunnels and trenches - there is a host of chalk in the dirt in these parts. The chalk in the tunnel/cellars you can see on the interior walls. Every nook and cranny there are bottles; ranging from 750ml type though to the larger varieties. Some areas were for their other product: Dom Peringnon too. The differing areas where the bottles are stored are for ...

... chalk tunnels and contains a staggering 100,000,000 bottles in different stages of aging at any given time. Our guide was very interesting Chinese fellow who was just getting into his stride of explaining the wine making process when the lighting system in the cave exploded in a shower of sparks. He got so freaked out that he almost ran out of the cellar but eventually led us miles away while he tried to regain his composure ...

Tour de France: a 6 day self guided cycling tour around the Champagne region, starting from Epernay. Day 1 - Epernay: Our 4 bikes were dropped off by Bob from Belle France and he ran through some of the places he thought we might like to stop at on the way, like the motor museum in Reims and the miniature model village near Cuisles.... he was old and we should probably have realised from then that we didn't really need to listen to everything he said. Anyway, Day 1 was ...

... I've ever said about the French. They're generally lovely people and put up with a lot of **** from your average non French speaking tourist - and still go out of their way to be friendly and helpful. I think it's just the Parisians who are rude and need to be deported to Tasmania while we repopulate Paris with some nice people, like the Irish or something. The train / boat trip from London to Calais was long. And Boring ...