No Frog Legs and Fizzy Bubbly

Late yesterday afternoon, my true love woke up from a nap. I just finished a bottle of Vin de Pays du Gard 2010 (I know, whatever) and it was time to go for dinner. With new digs to sport, it was an exciting evening for the both of us. We got ready and made our way down Bourdon. I thought we were going down another street, but there were boats that caught my eye and got distracted.

We took each other's photos and moved closer to our destination, Ile Saint Louis.

When we got to the island, we walked into Auberge de la Reine Blanche (Hotel of the White Queen). The food was amazing. The service was outstanding! They were out of frog legs, so I had snails, duck and créme brûlée for dessert.

After dinner we visited Notre Dame again, went to City Hall and got mischievous in the Metro station. Very fun night!

This morning I woke up and was overcome with this feeling like we slept in and missed our train to Reims. I sprung up to rest my torso on my left arm and checked the time on my iPhone. It was 6:15am. We didn't have to get up until 6:45am. I breathed a sigh of relief and let my head flop back on the pillow to drift off for another half hour. The best is when you wake up at 3:00am and think it's time to get up and then realize you get 4 more hours.

Our train departed from Gare de L'Est. We had a short Metro ride to get there and had the perfect amount of time to sit down for a café allongé and croissant. There were these little birds trying to attack our paisteries. My true love was annoyed and said we're in a Hitchcock film, so I swatted the little buggers away. Don't get me wrong, I really like birds. These birds were more like mice with wings and I don't like mice.

The train to Reims was fast! I had a window seat. There was a woman a couple rows down who was chewing gum with her mouth open. Shmack, shmack, shmack... I put Bon Iver on my iPod. The song Holocene seemed to be the perfect soundtrack as the French countryside almost danced by. There were farms, fields, little villages and a big blue sky. Coming from Paris, it was like a snapshot of a simpler time. Believe me, it takes a special kind of scene to get a tech, news, culture, music junkie to sit still and just breath a sigh of appreciation for this amazing world we get to live in.

We arrived in Reims in what felt like minutes. Getting out of the train station, we referenced our map to decide where to go first. We heard the cathedral was a good place to start. There's a train system here kind of like the street cars in Toronto, except the trains are really nice and they grow grass between the tracks. Why not?

The cathedral was massive.

I decided to go along with the candle lighting thing and it was pretty cool.

Next on the list was a champagne tour at Taittinger. The map we used in the guide book didn't have all of the streets labeled on it and we got a little lost. A couple of locals sent us in the right direction and eventually we found it.

When we walked into the visitors door, we were greeted by three attendants behind a desk (well, sort of greeted. There was a brief moment where I realized I might be a little under dressed for this place and thought the well dressed attendants might have thought I was lost on my way to a pub). We were not lost and the place was simple and classy.

We took a tour of the caves and gained an appreciation for the champagne making process. Champagne is aged in it's original bottle, the bottle that you buy it in. The odd shaped cork actually goes into the bottle as a straight round cylinder. It's fermented twice and the sediment removal process might literally knock your socks off.

After our first champagne tour of the day, we walked towards the next champagne tour, but stopped about half way for lunch. I felt like I've been ignoring veg, so I ordered a salad. My true love, the same.

The next tour was at Mumm (pronounced moome). The map in our guide book was all wrong and we ended up walking around a few blocks a few times before we found the visitors entrance. The tour started at 2:00pm and we were still lost at 1:54pm. When we finally arrived at the door, they still hadn't opened for tours. Wicked.

The tour was relatively the same as the first, but the girl who gave the tour had the best French accent ever (it was an English tour) and I'd rather listen to that than the guy at Taittinger with perfect English. We are in France are we not? Anyway, when we were doing a tasting, a lady asked where the bubbles came from. Seriously. It took a great deal of self control to not burst into hysterics. Especially since I was enjoying my 5th glass of spirits at that point.

After Mumm (which had the best champagne in my opinion), we toured the city until having to catch the train back to Paris. We checked out a gate that was made in 100-something. I guess the Romans used to live here before it was France and this was a gated community.

We stopped for ice cream and later for pints at the James Joyce! How cool is that?

Tonight is our last night in Paris. I've done a good job of ignoring the fact that this visit would eventually end. We're going to get dressed up and have one more French meal! Au revoir!