Arrondissement de Reims

What a gorgeous city, slow paced and beautiful. Loulou and Beth up early and off for a reconnaisance walk to suss the area out. They found the cathedral and how close we are to everything, and came back to tell us all about it. After a quick bite we were off, searching for coffee and looking at clothes shop, and yes we have helped the economy very slightly (baggage weight issues). Beautiful buildings everywhere, people are friendly, pleasantish temperature.
So today was Louise’s day-she wanted to do the champagne places - so she was tour director for the day 🤪.
Couldn’t believe it when we saw a place called Eden Park so of course the two rugby nuts needed a pic.
We had a superb lunch at a wee place in town -the biggest Cos Salad you have seen in your life for most of the party, I had this gorgeous ham salad on like a pastry bun, delicious. A lovely bottle of Rose went down nicely, then the rain came…. and I mean it poured for about 20 mins…. cooled the temp down rather well too.
Conductor Kiely had us catching a bus and off we went to Veuve Cliquot… no tour times available but it was a great photo opportunity.
A walk up a hill 😵‍💫 and along the way, we came across the most marvellous Vranken Pommery Champagne House. Wow what a place, what a story about an amazing woman Jeanne-Alexandrine Pommery who after becoming a widow at an early age, took the world by storm introducing their champagnes. She is know as a true trailblazer, the basis for luxury product promotion: the style, the brand, the communication and public relations. She invented the image of the Pommery Brand.
The vineyards are built on top of Chalk quarries/Pits and it took more than 10 years to build the exterior buildings, plant 25 hectares of vineyards and dig the 18km of interconnected galleries that link the 69 chalk pits to one another.
We went down the 116 steps to the cellar, and OMG there in front of us were all of these artworks displayed. Breathtakingly spectacular, utilising the chalk pits to highlight the art. I was gobsmacked. The temperature was amazing 30 metres underground, perfect temperature for the champagne to mature within the bottles. We all absolutely loved the experience and were so please Loulou had insisted we do it. We got a complementary glass of champagne at the end and it is quite delicious.
The walk back up the 116 steps after our goat climbing a couple of days (well for Beth and I) was challenging on the knees and back and we are paying for it.
Anyhoo we hopped back on a bus and off we went….allllll over the city… end of the work day dropping off all of the locals at their neighbourhoods and after about 30 mins we alighted and made our way home. Time for a rest then off out for a bite to eat.
Have to say so far we haven’t really had the best experience with service or food but hoping to improve.
Look up the Pommery Champagne - its bloody interesting.

Lots of photos today cos its all just so amazing…from just walking around, the pictures of nuns are from the bathroom where we had lunch - to the champagne houses… and that Art! wow…Pommery collection I will add to another post cos they won’t fitRead more