France

We decided to spend our last day on our trip at Versailles, or more precisely, the chateau and gardens at Versailles. Versailles is very easy to get to from Paris, it is served by the RER A line and from our hotel, it only took about an hour. We followed the advice of our guidebook and stopped in at the Tourist Information office in Versailles, and purchased “le Passport” which is a pass that enabled us to visit all the various elements of Versailles.

Today we spent more time in Paris, walking around and just being part of the city again. We headed over to Montmartre, which commands some of the best views of the Paris skyline and is home to the Sacre Coeur Basilica. This church is relatively new having been started in 1875 and was consecrated just after WWI in 1919. Deanna found a cat (actually the cat found her), and was her best friend for a few minutes while she fed a bit of leftover lunch.

A person can only take so many churches and museums and charming towns We went to Disneyland Paris today for something completely different than what the last six weeks were like. It’s easy to get to from Paris. It’s served by the RER-A metro line which is apparently one of the busiest commuter lines in the world (not due to the park but the other outlying stops it makes between the park and Paris).

We have another day on our Paris Museum Pass so we decided to venture out and take in a few more museums today. We started at the Louvre. It was busy, but again, we didn’t have to wait in the line to buy tickets with our pass. Armed with our trusty audio guide of the museum we spent a couple of hours winding our way through a few centuries of art.

One can’t think of Paris without thinking about the museums and monuments that are found here. The amount of art and culture that is centered in Paris is really quite overwhelming. People have dedicated entire careers to the art and found in Paris. We’re not that quite adventurous. We started the day with a visit to the Orsay Museum. Now I know what you’re thinking. Paris? Shouldn’t you be at the Louvre?

Today we travelled to our last city in our European adventure, Paris. We checked out of our hotel in Reims and boarded a non-stop TGV train to Paris-Est. In 45 minutes we were there and hoped on the 4 line of the Paris metro which took us to the Odeon stop, a 10 minute walk to our hotel. The train/metro system in Paris is so easy to use, it’s great.

Deanna was feeling a bit better this morning so we decided to head out and visit some champagne cellars. There are many that are found in Reims. As I mentioned earlier, the weather has turned a bit on us. Gone are the lazy sunny days of last week to be replaced by cool and rain. It was with rain coats on we headed to find a bus to take us to one of the Champagne cellars.

Reims (rhymes with France, I know, don’t ask), is the centre of all things champagne. It was our intention today to visit one or more of the champagne cellars but Deanna was not feeling well at all. We did get out for a bit this morning to visit the cathedral. You would be forgiven if you thought the cathedral in the photo collage was Notre Dame in Paris. It’s strikingly similar, though not quite as grand, it comes pretty close.

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.

Today was a relatively lazy day. We decided last night that we’re going to rent a car and drive to Reims tomorrow instead of taking the train. This is for two reasons. The first is that the earliest we can get into Reims is 7:45 pm which includes a trip to Dijon first and then a 3+ hour trip on the train. The second reason is that we’ve done all we wanted to do here in Beaune and would rather explore a few towns along the way and doing that by train isn’t feasible.