Champagne Showers

Cou cou! Finally a (series of) blog post(s) of adventures from my final 2 week paid vacation of the year- which involved a visit from a wonderful lifelong friend, during which we naturally made wonderful lifelong memories.  It’s a whopper, so I’ve divided it up for easier reading.

After a lovely American style Easter brunch (during which my French friend tried to eat his English muffin, apparently in England only called a “muffin” with a knife and fork) and chocolate egg hunt chez moi, I jumped on a train for a night in Paris. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t really know what to do with myself in Paris anymore… so I hit up the café in Montmartre, one of my favorite parts of Paris nonetheless, made famous by the film Amèlie, before then wandering out for a solo beer to watch a bit of the Paris Saint-Germaine futball game at a bar. The best part was that no one spoke English to me the entire day, a very small personal victory as big cities are used to tourists and generally switch to English upon hearing an accent. I have a terribly strong accent unfortunately, but at least the Parisians deemed my French competent enough to stomach my American pronunciations of their beautiful language. 

 

 Megan arrived the following morning, and we spent the day strolling around a bit of a rainy Paris, checking out the Eiffel Tower, the lovelock bridge and eating my favorite Macarons from la Durée on les Champs-Elsyées, which we paired with a lovely white wine in a small café just off the main drag. 

Nantes Castle Picnic

Back at home I got to see Nantes through the eyes of a tourist, and knock off a lot from my “to-do before I leave” list. The city did not disappoint. Really Nantes is such a neat place with pretty architecture, delicious regional specialties and odd quirky things to discover. We ate pastries every day, visited a small art gallery, bought fresh food and moldy delicious cheese from the market, rode bikes, spent some tranquil moments in the various gardens, enjoyed crepes, RODE THE ELEPHANT, and naturally spent some time walking around the castle, lounging by the moat enjoying a bottle of wine and a picnic lunch. 

We rode the elephant, and then took a million pictures with it

Three beautiful days later we found ourselves on part 2 of our adventures: the Champagne region of France, to the city of Reims (pronounced like “Prince” without the “P”, and with that throaty “R” French is famous for). It’s hard not to feel fancy when visiting Champagne caves, learning about the different types of grapes used to create each type and how the drink is made (1 vine of grapes to make 1 bottle of champagne!) and finally tasting the delicious bubbly beverage ourselves. Champagne can only be considered Champagne if produced from this region; there’s a special chalk in the soil here that makes the grapes extra fancy and magical.

 Reims is also home to the cathedral where the majority of the kings of France were crowned The cathedral is immense, equally impressive as Notre Dame de Paris, and has a stained glass window celebrating the region’s most famous beverage, and others created by one of my absolute favorite artists Marc Chagall. I had started a “Travel Wants” list around New Years with Champagne-Ardenne region as a definite doable at some point this year (unfortunately other cities like Prague and Budapest etc were not so lucky), and I was quite pleased when Megan agreed to the idea to check it out. 

Champagne Stained Glass

As difficult as it was to say au revoir to our fancypants hotel-living Champagne-drinking lifestyle, we continued via train back to Paris to find… the bus stop. The following week was taking us to Croatia and Slovenia, and the culture shock was a slap in the face the minute we stepped onto our eighteen hour bus ride… and no one spoke English, or French. It hit me then just how comfortable I have grown with France in general. It’s always good to be a bit cautious as a traveler, to recognize when you are out of your comfort zone and how it makes you feel, how you can grow from respecting whatever differences you may encounter. But the thing is, travel within France doesn’t give me that nervous anxiety “Oh boy what kind of idea was this?” kind of feeling anymore. It was an odd realization, and it made me feel good about how I’ve integrated into French life. I am truly confident in myself and my explorations within the country. But maybe my general level of comfort in France should have been apparent when I explained to le boy that I was going to Paris for a night alone, and my constantly lovingly worrying about my general well-being fiancé said “Oh I’m not worried about you in Paris (one of the world’s largest cities…) You’re great in Paris”. 

 

But oh my, we weren’t in France anymore. Thankfully, the gesture of tapping someone on the shoulder and holding out a box of cookies is universal, and perhaps one of our greatest ideas… feed these bus drivers treats so they will always make sure we are on the bus before it leaves the rest stop, since we have no idea how many minutes are announced in Croatian at every stop. Overall the bus ride wasn’t terrible, but it was an 18 hour bus ride all the same. We were happy when we finally arrived in Zagreb, Croatia the following morning. Perhaps we celebrated a bit too soon though…