Off to France!

Tuesday morning we left the good ol' Ibis at 9:00 and departed for Reims, France where we would be spending the next 5 days. 

Why Reims? Champagne. Reims is in the heart of the champagne region of France and champagne house visits were our next leg of the trip.

We arrived first at the Reims Management school. We had lunch there in their cafeteria. It was refreshing to see French instead of Flemish because, for me, it is much easier to decipher seeing as it is linked slightly to spanish. We had an interesting array of food including a barely cooked hamburger. (I was waiting for it to start moo-ing). After suffering through the cafeteria food we headed to a lecture hall to learn the economic background of the champagne industry. 

The lecture hall where we had a five foot 0 French man talk to us about champagne for 3.5 hours. Wow it was rough. It was really interesting but I've never had a lecture for that long. Nor have I had a lecture that long with a French man that crazy.

"Champagne from Champagne! Do you understand or no?! Helloooo."

After half a day at Reims Management School we said au devoir and hopped on the bus to get to Pommery. 

Pommery is one of the major champagne houses in Reims, France. 

They were preparing for a fundraising event so that's why there are the lights. Overall the tour was cool but it seemed more like the Disneyland version of a champagne house rather than traditionally authentic. Either way, champagne cellars are never boring. 

Pommery's champagne cask. This is actually after that of Mercier. #copycats

I can explain Mercier's when I put that blog post up (tomorrow's).

This had absolutely nothing to do with champagne.

(But it was an elephant so I took a selfie with it..)

Waiting for the tour

Louise Pommery took over the house of brands after her husband died. Like most champagne houses it started as a textile house. 

This isn't a great picture but these are over 200 year old bottles of champagne. Cha-ching.

The doors to the caves.

The steps down to the caves

Louise Pommery decorated the caves with artwork. 

Most of the champagne caves that we went into had carvings too. 

This is a good way to see the scale of some of these caves. I would say the average height was 40 meters. 

I was trying to show how tall these were. 

The carving of Louise Pommery

These are their most valuable bottles

We had a tasting at the end of the visit and I really enjoyed the champagne. It was the sweetest of all the ones we tried.

After the visit we were on our own to explore Reims and grab a bite to eat.

Reims is much much more different than Antwerp and I definitely like Antwerp a lot more. 

The French are also not as rude as everyone said. Also, France is a tad more expensive.

Oh, also. Not as much beer.

Sooooo we ended up going to Subway because no one could really make a decision on prices of food and it was a pretty safe bet.

Walking back towards the hotel.

Reims Cathedral. We will have a visit there later in the week.

On our way back to the hotel we popped into the grocery store. After listening to a 3 hour lecture on how the Champagne industry is going downhill because of prices we decided on 2 euro bottles of sparkling wine. Sorry, champagne.

We spent the night watching the French open. Not too bad of a day at all!