Sunday - May 17
Yesterday we headed west to Reims from
Strasbourg, through Nancy, with a stop at Verdun to see the French
National Cemetery and memorial for the infamous WWI battle that lasted
360 days. The day was appropriately somber, being overcast, chilly and
windy.
On a lighter note, our hotel for two
nights has laundry facilities - Pam is ecstatic and two loads of laundry
later feels civilized once more. In celebration, Norm grudgingly okayed
tossing out a pair of his favorite ankle socks (with only small holes)
which she said would only pollute the wash water. Even so, she somehow
managed to get only her stuff into one of the loads, with the other load
reserved for Norm.
Today having much improved weather,
we saw the sights of Reims including, naturally, it's great Cathedral
plus, as a bonus, a nearby Basilica in which are interred all of the
Carolingian kings. Both buildings were lambasted during WWI. This is why
the Cathedral has several stained glass windows by Marc Chagall circa
the 1970's. It being Sunday, mass was being held in part of the
Cathedral (which still left a vast amount of real estate available for
visitors). The mass was in latin, which seems just right for the venue,
more so than would be the case in Garden Grove's mod Crystal Cathedral,
which has recently been repurposed by Mother Church. The truly enormous,
extravagantly carved pipe organ mounted along one section of a
Cathedral wall was in glorious full voice during our time there. More
prosaically, Sunday also meant zero traffic and prime, free parking
right up close.
Norm lit a candle for our neighbor:
But churches aside,
our other main objective was Epernay about 20 miles south of Reims. For
this is Champagne country, the one region in the world where you can
call your sparkling wine by that name. Andre eat your bubbles out. There
are 29 Champagne cellars (out of over 350 in the region) in Epernay
alone, along the prestigious half-mile long cobblestoned Avenue de
Champagne. Beneath this avenue is a maze of over 68 miles of cellars at
an average depth of 98 feet housing over 200 million bottles. A daunting
task to tour them all but, again, this being Sunday only two were open.
We selected all two to visit. We bought a bottle of brut from Mercier
to celebrate our last night in France. So, With the car parked and
locked at the hotel and the laundry folded away, there was nothing to
prevent all of that bubbly from going down the hatch.
Pam saw another Citroen photo op:
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