Note: Journaling is a great way to build your stories. When you keep a journal you can record details that would be long forgotten if you let days pass. Then when you look back at your pages, you relive those moments and your stories emerge. Sometimes journals can be stories in themselves.

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Champagne tasting today, with my new friend Susan, whom I met at the dinner with Jack and Randy. The drive out there was long. Sabine, the tour guide, didn’t have a microphone so you had to shout. Susan, who was way in theback of the minivan couldn’t hear a thing and I was eager to make her acquaintance but I was in the front seat so didn’t have a chance to say a word to her. The others on the tour were Chuck and Hope, a couple from California. Sabine didn’t tell us much history about the region we were driving through. I asked questions. She handed out some tour books and we looked through them.

This was a farm region and the farmers sell to wholesalers at a big market outside Paris every day. The vendors who populate the markets go to this wholesale market to get their produce and goods. These street markets are abundant throughout Paris since they don’t have any Safeway or Andronico’s or any supermarkets as we know them in America. They set up stands in the streets on particular days of the week and sell to the Parisians who come with their rolling carts for their groceries.

I read one of the guidebooks Sabine handed out. There are five Champagne regions near Reims (pronounced Rhance). Each specializes in a different grape. The champagnes are blended and not made from only one grape, which was the invention of Dom Perignon, the father of champagne. Each area blands the champagne with one grape predominating.

Here is a link to the site of the Reims Office of Tourism  . Although it is all in French, you can get an idea of the champagne region and there are some maps.

We arrived at Reims and saw the cathedral. Sabine told us about the smiling angels on the façade, very unusual, smiling angels. She explained that this was the cathedral where all the French kings were crowned. Up in the chancel behind the altar there are three Marc Chagall windows. Susan and I lit candles and stopped for a moment. It was nice.

  
The Reims cathedral and on the far left of the three angels, the left most one is smiling. Her arm broke off during the bombing of World War II.

Then back in the van and we were late for the tour at Tattinger, for which we had to pay an additional 14 euros. We went down, down, into the chalk caves and the Tattinger guide told us the process of making champagne. Then we each got a glass in the tasting room.


Tattinger chalk cave.

We found a little town after the Tattinger tour and had lunch in the sunshine at a nondescript place, sort of by happenstance and unplanned but it was nice to sit in the sunshine. I had a goat cheese salad and we got some nice white wine. The salad was very fresh and nicely prepared.


Our lunch group, Hope, Susan, Chuck and our guide Sabine.


Susan and I in front of a church we visited while we walked around the little town after lunch.

And we drove through the region some and stopped to take pictures at Moet et Chandon.

Me and Dom

Since Sabine didn’t really have a plan for another champagne winery, she took us to a tasting room, where she then informed us that it was going to be another 33 euros apiece to taste 6 samples of champagne. We looked at each other blankly. Suddenly I suggested, we could share the tastes. Lucky I suggested that because they were full and generous glasses of champagne which would have been utterly ridiculous for one person to drink alone. Susan and I shared. They also brought some pink sponge-like cookies, two trays of them which are a specialty of the region. They were very sweet and squishy.


Champagne tastes with pink cookies.

Sabine left us tasting champagne to select and purchase a case of champagne for herself.

When we left the place, I asked Susan if she had dinner plans and fortunately she said no, so we got a bottle of champagne number 2 from the tasting, a dry, light one and then piled into the van for the long trip home which was very quiet and sleepy.

Nearly two hours later, Susan and I were at my apartment and we opened the champagne and had a chance to get to know each other.  My apartment was light and bright and cheery, but the street was so busy and there were no quiet cafes to go for a nice bite of dinner. We searched one out after taking a short metro ride. Susan knew a neighborhood not far which is close to another friend of hers who also lives in the 15^th, close to Le Mot Piquet Grenelle metro stop. I recognized it from my walk to find the rue Cler market.

We settled on a restaurant and had leeks and a steak, which was full of gristle. The leeks were delicious. We sat outside. It was so nice to have dinner one-on-one with someone. I liked Susan right away. We had a nice meal and she invited me to come to her neighborhood the next evening. She wrote out the metro stops and we agreed to meet at 6.

You can continue to read about my Paris trip here: Day 10 http://tellourlifestoriesblog.com/2011/05/28/tuesday-april-20-2011-lunch-with-ann-and-dinner-with-susan.aspx