Weekend
3: August 30th – August 31st 2014
Wednesday, August 27th
This
week was pretty calm, but an old ALLEX was visiting Paris, so we had dinner
with him, his friend, and Rachel. We decided to meet them on Rue Mouffetard for
some drinks and dinner. We ate on the little square (Place de la Contrescarpe)
and then found a nice place to eat along the street. Stevie had the most
stereotypical French meal, French onion soup and crème brulee for dessert.
Stuart had some steak and fries (steak-frites).
Saturday, August 30th
We
woke up very early to French standards and caught the 8AM train over the Reims
in the northeast side of France. The TGV (high speed train) got us there in
about 45 minutes. Once we made it there, we walked into the city’s center to
check out the cathedral Notre Dame of Reims. This small-ish town of Reims was
pretty much demolished by WWI and was reconstructed in 10 years. The
Rockefeller’s donation helped renovate the cathedral. The cathedral itself was very plain on the inside
but it had some beautiful stained glass windows. You could see some burn marks
and shell marks from being on fire from WW1. They say that you could see the
lead from the cathedral’s roof pouring out from the gargoyles’ mouths because
the fire was so hot.
After the
cathedral, we went next door to see the Palais du Tau, or the archbishop’s
place of residence. The princes of France would stay there before their
coronation. On the day of their coronation, the princes would have a have a big
parade over to the cathedral, get sworned in as King of France (several hours
and multiple rituals), then head back over to the Palais to have a banquet. The
Palais held a lot of the royal jewels and since Charles X (younger brother of
Louis XVIII) was the last person to get coronated there, most of the jewels were
his.
We wandered around
the small city center for lunch and to check out the sites. During our
wanderings we stopped at Porte Mars, a super old ancient Roman triumphal arch
that dates back to the third century AD (Wikipedia claims it to be the widest
arch in the Roman world). You could tell it was Roman from some of the statues
and markings in and on the arch.
Around the corner
from Porte Mars, we stopped by the Boulingrin covered market to check it out.
It looked like it was closing up shop after a Saturday morning rush. There was fresh produce, fish, meat, and of
course – cheeses of all sorts being sold.
That afternoon, we
had booked a nice champagne tour to one of the local champagne houses. The
three hour tour took us all over the countryside close to the city where there
were several small villages that made their own champagne. We were able to stop
by one of the houses (Dumont)
and got a tour of their fermentation areas, cellars, and of course, got to
taste the champagne. This house was run by 6 family members ONLY and made about
90,000 bottles/year. We were able to see how they turn the bottles during the
second part of the fermentation process (where the yeast eats the injected
sugar to make those bubbles we all know and love in the champagne). I (Stevie) would
love to tell you more about this chemical process, but most of the tour was in
French, soooo you can refer to this quick guide
J.
We made it back to
Paris around 8 that night and had a great night sleep to rest up for the next
day’s activities!
Sunday, August 31st
Today,
we didn’t really have an agenda, but I (Stevie) wanted to explore the
Montmartre neighborhood and possibly go to church there. The Montmartre neighborhood
of Paris has the infamous Moulin Rouge and the beautiful basilica of Sacre-Coeur . Click
the link if you want to see pictures of the inside of the church as we were not
allowed to take pictures inside the church.
Once we got off at
the metro in the neighborhood, we took a round-about type path to get up to the
basilica to see the last two remaining windmills on this hill of Paris. (That’s
why there’s a windmill for the sign of Moulin Rouge.) Apparently Van Gogh also
lived along the street we walked, but we didn’t realize that at the time. We also passed by the St. Vincent cemetery and
the tiny vineyard of Clos Montmartre on our way up to the church.
Once we got to the
church, we took a tour around the inside. The church is beautiful, but we
couldn’t get pictures (sorry!). After the lap around the church with the
983749843250 other tourists, we got our crypt and dome tickets to see the
basement of the church and climb to its dome. The crypt was extremely less
crowded than the main floor of the church and had various tombs and relics
lining the inside of the chapel in the crypt.
After the crypt
was the ascent of 300 stairs up the dome of the basilica. We had a great panoramic
view of Paris from on top of this church on a hill. The pictures describe it a
lot better than we can J.
We decided to
wander down the tourist-y road to get back to the metro and discovered a superb
chocolate shop. We got some dessert there (amazing liquid chocolate and whipped
cream from Maison George Larnicol
Chocolaterie) and headed back down the hill to enjoy the rest of our Sunday
afternoon.
That’s about it
for this weekend! Trains, churches, champagne, and chocolate!
The agenda for next weekend: TBD, but possibly Amsterdam!
Bises
(lots of love),
Stevie
and Stuart
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