As I mentioned yesterday, the plan today was to pick up the rental car and make our way to Reims which is North East of Paris. We headed out of Beaune and within a few minutes we were zooming our way northwards. It was interesting to note how quickly the terrain changed. South of Beaune it’s vineyards as far as the eye can see, north it quickly became mixed farming (cattle, grains, grapes and other crops that were hard to identify from the road) as well as forest.

We made our way to Flavigny-sur-Ozerain which is a small town about an hour North East of Beaune. We decided to stop there after searching for interesting towns north of Beaune on the internet. It turns out Flavigny-sur-Ozerain belongs to a select group of villages in the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (“The most beautiful villages of France”) and the movie Chocolat was filmed in and around the town. The town is very beautiful and was eerily quiet. We didn’t see many people around and heard a few roosters crowing away as we wandered about. Aside from the charm (of which there was plenty), there really wasn’t much else there. We went looking for a boulangerie and couldn’t find one which is saying something in France.

We headed back out and drove through more rual France on our way to Chtillon-sur-Seine where we found some ham and cheese croissant and strawberry beignet. From there we headed north, past rolling hills and some massive wind-mill energy farms into Champagne country.

The weather turned a bit on us, after five weeks of stellar weather we had some clouds and bit of light rain. Nothing too nasty mind you but enough to remind us that we are in October now and summer is defiantly over. Our GPS that had been working like a champ for us all day started giving us really bad advice when we got close to Reims. It totally missed the turn off the auto-route and four or five times gave totally wrong directions in our attempt to find the rental car agency at the train station. We got close to the station, parked the car and then went on a reconnaissance mission to find the Avis return point. We could see other rental agencies but not Avis. I went into the train station and found an information booth and asked and it turns out the Avis rental spot is on the other side of the tracks and not where all the other ones are . Anyway, we had parked close(ish) to our hotel so we decided to check in and then return the car.

Deanna has come down with a cold :(We were both doing well this trip but all the traveling finally took it’s toll. She had a bit of nap while I dropped the car off and we then ventured out for dinner. We’re on a busy road, with lots of choices of things to eat. We picked a brasserie just down the block. I had round three of Moules et Frites while Deanna had some salad. She also has a glass of Champagne, so she’s not that sick :)

Hopefully she’ll bounce back here (and not infect me), but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.