Champagne for the day

Yesterday, I went to Reims, France to go Champagne tasting with my friend Giovi. We took a morning train and met at the metro station before heading off to the train station. We got on the metro together and waited and waited and realized that it wasn't going anywhere. There had been a problem at the next metro stop, and so they were waiting for it to clear up. So Giovi and I kept waiting. Almost 20 minutes went by and the metro still wasn't moving. I was getting restless so I was looking at my train tickets, and realized that I forgot my youth discount card. Without it, I might have had to pay full fare, which would have probably been over 50 euros! So I decided that I needed to go back to my house; luckily the metro still hadn't gone anywhere. Giovi and I ran and ran back to my apartment, because now it was getting late and we were worried about making our train.

We finally made it to my apartment, huffing and puffing, I ran upstairs and grabbed the card, then we ran and ran back to the metro station. Fortunately, the metro was moving again, but we didn't know if we would be able to make our train. We were super worried. Eventually, we got off and transfered at another metro station, running and running and huffing and puffing. Then it was only 4 stops to the train station. At the train station, we just hopped on a car as quick as we could, and we made it with 5 minutes to spare! It was quite an adventurous morning, but the mishaps didn't stop there.

When we got to Reims, we went to the Notre Dame where every king in France was crowned and where Joan of Arc convinced Charles VII to crown himself even though the king of England sort of ruled France at that time. There were a bunch of monuments of Joan of Arc, and the cathedral itself was extremely old. Clovis, the first king of the Franks was crowned there in the late 400s. So we wandered around the cathedral a bit, then went to the Palais du Tau where they had a bunch of statues from the cathedral and also some robes and crowns that the kings wore. It was actually pretty interesting, and I understood a lot of it, because I've been taking the History of France.

After that, we wandered around Reims not sure what to do. We looked in our tour guide and found a museum dedicated to the end of WWII, because apparently they signed a treaty in Reims to end WWII in Europe. We walked and walked and walked trying to find this museum, and then when we got there it was closed. So that was that, and we walked back to town for lunch. We headed to a cafe determined to have some champagne with lunch, but all the champagne cost over 15 euros for a glass. So I just had water. There was a curious thing on the menu at this cafe. Raw ground beef! I saw lots of people order it, and the person sitting next to me had the waiter put a raw egg over his raw beef. It was disgusting; it couldn't be sanitary. I wanted to throw up looking at that.

After lunch, we went on a hunt for Mumm's or Tattinger's champagne cellars. We walked, got lost, walked some more, got more lost, walked and walked, asked people where to find the cellars and never found them! Apparently they were kind of out of town, and it was too far to walk. We found a couple of cellars that we asked to take a tour of, but they said they didn't have public tours running. So our whole plan was ruined. By this time, it was late in the afternoon and we had to go home. We were so disappointed that we never actually tasted Champagne in Champagne, that we bought some mini bottles of "sparkling wine" at the grocery store and sat on a park bench and toasted. It was sad. But all in all, it was a pretty adventurous day, and we got some good pictures, too!

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go back to Strasbourg to meet Brett for the day, but we don't know if that will work out, because there is a NATO summit there and apparently there are some dangerous protesters and rioters planned to be there. I think that the public transportation will be significantly reduced, and because we're concerned about our safety, we probably will have to cancel. It makes me sad, but I don't want to be in the middle of a riot! I'm going to the train station today to see if I can get a last minute ticket to Freiburg and bypass Strasbourg. I'll be crossing my fingers, because it's a stretch to get last minute train tickets.

Leah