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.

Today we packed up (again) and left Lyon for Beaune. Our train didn’t leave until 1:25 pm so we grabbed a couple of pain-au-chocolat and wandered around Lyon. It was another beautiful morning, as our luck with the weather continues. There was a large open air market down by the river, it was nice to wander through the stalls. Lots of local produce, but some of it was imported and not local.

We started off by eating breakfast at our hotel this morning. Usually, we’ve been grabbing a croissant/pan-au-chocolat in the morning but we decided to grab a bite here before heading out. We headed north a bit using the Lyon metro system. It’s very clean, easy to navigate and comprehensive. We walked for a bit and ended up at a silk shop where everything is hand made. We were treated to a guided tour by a young lady who speaks english.

When I was originally planning the France portion of our trip, Lyon wasn’t on the itinerary. I was planning a few days in Chamonix but couldn’t practically swing it on the train. It would have involved a few transfers and some long layovers and in the end, I opted to swap out the Chamonix part for Lyon. Knowing now that driving in France isn’t such a big deal, I probably would have just kept the car for the entire two weeks that we are not in Paris and skipped the train.

Today was a travel day as we say au revoir to Aix-En-Provence and bonjour to Lyon. I can’t say that I loved Aix. It was fine but it was a bit far away from the heart of provence where I wanted to explore a bit easier and it was a bit big and hard(ish) to navigate around/in. Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice enough place and we enjoyed our time there but it won’t go down as someplace we would need to go back to anytime soon.