The
morning began innocently enough with breakfast and then the boys departed for
the Europcar hire office. They
waited in the queue for over an hour, behind the desk was total chaos – they
began at 5th in the line!
French school holidays began on Bastille Day, so I guess it’s a busy
time. The boys noticed that other
car rental desks were busy but they were processing customers faster…. Meanwhile, Kez and I waited in the
lobby of our hotel with all the bags.
Suffice
to say, the boys returned with the almost brand-new rental car, it has
done only 360km – an Opel Insigna, made by GM (about the size of a Camry wagon,
diesel). We drove out of Paris –
the GPS refusing to co-operate at first, due to the high buildings, trees and
rain! Made it out on to the A4 and
drove through the countryside to Reims.
Stopped at a service centre along the way for lunch – not much English spoken by the staff, but
we managed to get by.
Arrived
in Reims about 3pm. Absolutely
beautiful, clean town. Found our
way to the Notre Dame Cathedral St Reimi (not to be confused with the Notre Dame
in Paris). We’ll visit it again
tomorrow because we didn’t have much time today. The tourist information bureau is in the grounds, and we
went there to organize a champagne tour. The lovely young man spoke english and was impressed with my small effort to tell him we were Australian.
Off to
G.H. Mumm for a 4pm tour in English.
Wow! First a 10 minute video
then the walk down into the caves, where the temperature is kept at 10°C.
Tasting afterwards and of course, a trip to the ‘boutique’ to
purchase. Gave our tour guide an
Australian flag/kangaroo stick pin and he was thrilled.
Checked
in to our hotel – just before 50 British students and their teachers! Great dinner at the restaurant (no
English – only the menu!) and again, we enjoyed a good meal and managed with
our communications. They were
cooking on a wood-fired open range (grill) – of course, David was very
interested and was able to watch the cooking.
Tomorrow
we are hoping to visit more wineries/champagne houses in either Reims or
Eppernay. Weather today was
overcast with the odd shower, but a cool evening.
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