Day 25 – Fri 04 Jul 14, Metz to Reims (France)
Forecast:
16-28 deg C, fine and sunny; Listed distance: 70km; Actual distance: 10km;
Cumulative distance: 987km; Metz: 15 deg C, sunny; Reims: 16 deg C, overcast
As we did not want to miss the train, we were up at 5:15am. When checking out from the hotel, they wanted
to charge us Euro 53 for 2 breakfasts and city tax. After much questioning it
came down to Euro 33, which was Euro 3.80 short, but Wendy wasn't going to
argue any further. They will probably debit the card when they find out! (P.S. they didn’t)
We arrived at the train station nice and early at 6:15am. However, if we had known that our train
wouldn't be allocated a platform number until about 15 mins prior to departure we
wouldn't have rushed so much. Oh well, better to wait a while than to be too
rushed and really have to panic.
The train left right on time at 7:08am and we saw some pretty and not so pretty
scenery along the way, with lots of heavy industrial sites, both operational
and run down. Our bikes went in a
special spot, hanging from the front wheel in the first carriage. We virtually
had the train to ourselves until other stops when more passengers got on. We arrived at Reims at 9:55am, 13 minutes
before the scheduled time. French Rail
works nicely. Just as we exited the
station it began to rain, but it wasn't far to the hotel - less than 1 km in
fact.
It
was about 10:30am when we got to the hotel and check-in is not normally until 3pm.
However, as Wendy had informed the hotel of our early arrival and requested
that we be able to dump the luggage and the bikes in a secure area, our room
was ready!! Amazing. The lady at the front desk couldn't have been more
helpful. We were allocated room 24 in a small hotel, about 25 rooms all up. It is right on the corner of a major
intersection so they must have retro-fitted aircon and triple-glazing to keep
the noise out. Ever since those first
couple of hotels after Zurich that had no aircon, we’ve tried to book places
with aircon, especially if they are close to city hot spots. And the loo is
separate to the bathroom which is a fantastic idea and this is maybe the 4th or
5th hotel to have separate loos. At Euro
102/night, it is not exactly cheap, but it is quite luxurious. Beds are comfy,
bathroom functional, and aircon works very well.
The
big highlight for today was the tour of the Vranken Pommery champagne caves. We planned our arrival in Reims in order to
take a very popular underground tour of the Pommery Winery. Thanks to chalk
mining dating back to Roman times they have the perfect facility for storing
and aging champagne underground. There are 300km of tunnels under the city of
Reims in total; Pommery has 18km, all at a cool 10-11 deg C for their
20,000,000 bottles of the bubbly stuff. As
flash photography was strictly prohibited, photography was very difficult
during the underground tour due to the low light. No winery (or brewery for that matter) tour
would be complete without a tasting. It
was a very nice drop, but at A$14.50 per thimble-sized glass it should have
been. The tour was interesting; however, we had a family with 4 young
children, one about 2 yrs old and you can imagine how interested she was in the
whole process. After sipping our one and
only glass at the end of the tour we headed back to the hotel via some other
interesting sites in Reims.
Had a nana nap then went searching for dinner; we felt like Chinese (but didn’t look like one). The first one we chose was not open until later, so we took a longer walk to another which also only opened at 1900. We got there just as it opened and had a lovely meal and a beer each before walking home via a different route.
France played Germany in the soccer tonight and all over the city the
restaurants, pubs, cafés, etc were showing it on big screens. I think the
Germans won. At least it will make for a quiet night without all the yahoos.
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