Reims. Champagne Area, December 2012

We rented a car to go from Paris to Reims.  In retrospect it turns out this was a horrid idea.  Before I go to far I want to recommend Reims.  Let's say you are 'stuck' in Paris for a few days.  I know, there are worse things than being 'stuck' in Paris.  But bear with me.  Let's say you are stuck in Paris and you've already seen the sights.  Reims can be reached by train in about 45 minutes from any of the main Paris train stations.  From the train station in Reims you can be at the Reims Cathedral in 5 minutes walking and there are a myriad of great small and large Champagne houses within 10 minutes of there.

Reims Cathedral, Paty is doing her Joan of Arc impersonation.

Reims Cathedral, in a not so amazing coincidence this is also known as Notre Dame.  Specifically Notre Dame de Reims.

And I will put up the Reims Notre Dame against the 'other' Notre Dame's history anytime.  tThis is the cathedral where all the Kings of France received their coronation.  This tradition was started in 1429 when none other than Joan of Arc liberated the Cathedral from someone that at the time must have been deemed bad (google: England and Hundred Years War) and the coronation of Charles VII was attended by Miss Arc herself.

In short, I am not one to go in for the Church and Cathedral tour of Europe.  But this place is so impressive it alone is worth the 45 minute train ride from Paris.

Additionally, notice from the attached photo.  The place was empty.  At the Notre Dame in Paris we waited in a 1/4 mile long line to get in.  Here I went inside the Cathedral and it was just us, a couple workers and one other tourist couple.  It was so empty is was a little bit spooky.  I kept expecting Tom Hanks to jump out of a corner whilst filming another Dan Brown movie.

Besides the adequately impressive Joan of Arc history, this structure was a part of World War I and to a lesser extent World War II.  It was almost entirely flattened in WWI.  Here is a good picture showing the stained glass windows.  The dark windows on the right are original 1500'ish, while the lighter ones are new since WWI.  They do not look as Stained Glass'ish, but rest assured they are the same.  I just had to adjust the light sensitivity way up to capture the huge contrast between the two windows.

Left, post WWI stained glass. Right, around 1500 stained glass.

Last photo of the cathedral.  This is the famous Rose Window.  It doubles to give some perspective on the size of the cathedral and the utter emptiness we experienced.  At 140 meters long, 30 meters wide and 38 meters tall; it is a very large structure.

Now we are a few pictures and way too many words in and I haven't mentioned our reason for coming to Reims...Champagne!

For those of you new to Tobinblog, Paty is a Champagne advocate.  Because, let's be honest, Life Is Flat Without Bubbles and we should Celebrate Everyday.

Reims is the heart of Champagne.  Épernay is about 28 kilometers away and holds more of the big Champagne house headquarters, but Reims is the biggest city in the Champagne region and has plenty of big houses as well.

Since we were there in December, the traditional Christmas markets were out in Reims.  This was a great one, it was a heated hut sponsored by a local artisan (grower's) champagne house:

Paty double fisting?

They had a map on the ceiling of all the visitors.  Of course because Paty is Paty, we had to have two dots when they asked us where we were from.  I was the first Seattle dot and I am relatively certain that Paty will be the first and only Merida, Yucatan, Mexico dot.

Day two we started our tour of the Champagne houses.  Reims is the home to quite a few large houses, headlined by two we toured on the first day: Pommery and Tattinger.  Each house is pretty much like a large estate.  This is the entrance to Pommery, that is some sort of modern art in the driveway.  Tattinger (not pictured) is less than a half mile from the entrance pictured here.  The Champagne houses tend to cluster together.

In the lobby, this is the famous barrell that they rolled from Reims to Paris for a World's Fair:

Yes, it really is that big.

The estates are above ground, but all the Champagne houses do their work below ground in man made limestone caves.  There is a ton of history about these caves.  Originally the evcavation was done by the Romans when they were building Reims and the first Cathedral.  It was told to us during the Pommery tour that Madame Pommery was the first to realize that this was an ideal place to make Champagne due to the constant cool temperature and humidity.  Take that with a grain of salt, but all the Champagne house have utilized caves for over 100 years.  There is also extensive WWI and WWII history involved with the caves.  There were a lot of carvings done on the limestone from people that were taking refuge in the caves, especially during WWII.  The limestone is still extremely soft, you can make a mark on it with your fingernail.

The entrance to the winery and cellar at the bottom of a 116 step staircase.

This is what the tour basically consisted of, plus some art.

These roms are everywhere with this much or more Champagne. And some of the last of the famous 1898 vintage.

After the tour, you finally get to taste. Paty tried to be the hostess.

After the tasting we needed lunch.  We had reservations at Le Jardin.  Basically 'The Garden' option, kind of like the bar but set in another entire building in a different part of the estate, off a three star Michelin restaurant.  It was fabulously good.  During our time in Reims we bascially settled into doing super awesome lunches then having a cheap doner kebab for dinner at the hotel while drinking a bottle of great Champagne that we just picked up.

So that's what three Michelin Stars looks like.

Random super cool church next to Tattinger.

Riddling racks, these were everywhere.

Paris, December 2012

Paris in Winter.

Paris in December.

Paty had almost three weeks of vacation in the use it or lose it before Janruary 1, so were looking for somewhere to go.  The options were plentiful, but we were limited by where could we get with 180K Alaska Airlines miles.  It turns out we could get almost anywhere we wanted.  But we could not get home.  There were hidden (and sometimes over)  blackout dates for much of the world.  Ideally we wanted to go to New Zealand as our first choice.  I actually found a flight from Dec 1 - Dec 8.  But with traveling that would have been 6 nights in country and about 48 hours total in flight.  Not worth it.  Then my focus turned to Peru.  I have had Machu Picchu on my bucket list for a long time and in an amazing coincidence we have a friend living in Cusco, Peru.  But Paty did not want to go somewhere 'normal', she wanted to speak another language.  Since she speaks Spanish everyday at work, this convoluted logic makes a bit of sense.

Then after about two weeks of searching, a Paris flight opened up.  40K miles each (almost too cheap) and we were off.  Seattle > Chicago > Paris.  The good news is we still have 100K miles banked and with US Soccer World Cup Qualifiers in Costa Rica and Panama in the fall...

Since Paty was in Brazil, it was up to me to make arrangements.  And the first thing I learned is that Paris is expensive.  I already knew that, but add in the relative strength of the dollar compared to the Euro (the Exchange on this trip was 1 Euro = $1.33 or thereabouts) made it worse.  Our plan was for one week in Paris and one week in the French countryside...somewhere.  I found a service that rents apartments in Paris for people like us.  I had one place in the Latin Quarter all booked, but at the last second it was not available.  Being Three days before we left, I had to make a split decision and I ended up picking out option #2 which was a small apartment in Ile St Louis.  The apartment could be graded on three criteria in order of important to us:  Location, Cleanliness and Size.  Well our aprartment got a 10, 9 and 1 respectively.  Ile St Louis is an island right in the middle of Paris.  It is the island right behind where the Notre Dame Cathedral is.  From our apartment to the front of Notre Dame was 600 meters or about a 4 minute walk.  The location and the island were perfect, the apartment was super clean.  It was also SUPER small, capital letters intended.  Conflicting reports out of the Mr and Mrs Tobin camp have claimed that someone was so mad when he or she saw the apartment that him or her cried and insisted on moving.

But we got  used to it and made the best of it as every morning the bakery, cheese shop and butcher was literally next door to our place.  And with the exception of one night, it was very quiet.

Here is a pic of our little island:

Christmas lights throughout the island.

And here is what we ate almost every day at some point:

With egg: Croque Monsieur, W/O egg: Croque Madam

Here is the photo of our island from one of the many bridges that connect us to the rest of Paris:

Add captionNotre Dame in the background, the Eiffel Tower 5 degrees to the left off picture.

Hey look, gelato shaped as a flower:

Yes, it was cold in Paris.

Now that we have gotten accustomed to the mini Paris apartment and had some time to rest and relax, it's time to go exploring.  We are not ones for checking off a list in a tour book.  Basically we just left the apartment on foot everyday with a vague plan on somethings we wanted to see.  We arrived on a Tuesday and had the apartment until the following Tuesday, but as we paid for the week we had the option of leaving early so our intention was to head somewhere else on Monday.  Thus, six nights in Paris.  One of the beauties of Paris is there are amazing sites everywhere.  We all know about the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but pretty much everywhere you turn there is some amazing beautiful and most likely old building.  Here is the door to some random church we happened to walk by:

This is pretty much the site I saw the entire trip, Paty crossing the street by herself.  Because like a true Parisian if there are no cars coming, I go.  But Paty has this ingrained rule abiding streak that makes her either wait for the walk sign or hesitate so much about crossing on the red no crossing sign that she ends up 10 seconds behind:

Obligatory Eiffel Tower Pictures:

Later in the week we went up to one of our favorite place, Montmarte.  It is in the the 18th arrondissement of Paris.  An arrondissement is basically a district.  They are basically the way you tell someone where you are in Paris.  "Today we hung out with the hipster's in the 18th" would be a quote I could have used.

File this under note to self: Next time in Paris, just stay in the 18th.  It's a great place, very cool and trendy restaurants and all the good new bakeries are up there that have won 5 of the last 6 years the contest to make the state baguette.  Paris is so big, you almost have to take the Metro wherever you go anyway, might as well just stay in the 18th and take the metro to the center when needed.

Touristy Center of top of Montmarte hill.  Where the artists sell their wares.

The photo above is where we bought a two paintings last time we were in Paris.  We did not buy anything this time.  But it is a great place to hang out in a nice day.  Today it was cold but sunny, so we hunkered down in an outside cafe and had some lunch and I read my book while Paty did Paty things.  I'm almost always happy to get the house wine by the pitchet or demi-pitchet (basically a pitcher of whatever they have as house wine) and again this did not disappoint.  We spent most of the day wandering around Montmarte, which also include Paty's favorite church Sacré-Cœur Basilica or the Basilica of Sacre-Cour.

Yes, that is the Vin Chaud or Gluwein or Hot Wine commonly sold at Christmas markets.

 Another day, more walking.  We walked around Paris A LOT.  But that's really all I wanted to do outisde of one planned outing, so I was good.

River Seine from one of the Ile St Louis bridges.

Random Photo that I thought turned out well.

Hey, look at that, there's the Louvre.  It's like famous and stuff.  We should go there.

That's a really nice scarf you have there Paty.

That's the scarf you bough in the Aran Islands six years ago. Oh and there's the Mona Lisa.

Someone complained that we did not have many photos together, Voila:

Still got the scarf.

It turns out that the Louvre is open until 9:30 on Friday's.  So even with a procrastination schedule (read, Paty really wanted to sleep in on our tiny little sofa bed and I got up to surf the net, write some soccer blurbs and make coffee) we had plenty of time.  Being as it was around 6 PM on a Friday night I thought we would have a "Night at the Museum" experience and the Louvre would be relatively empty.  This was not so, it was packed.  It's hard to explain just how big the actual museum is.  It's enormous and very easy to get lost.  And no matter where you go, there are people everywhere.  Except for a few choice exhibits like the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo nothing is crowded though.  It's just a really really really large space.  Here's a photo trying to show one of many grand halls, I was trying to get the scope of the place but failed:

The Louvre is really large, and still got the scarf.

Paty with Venus de Milo, not the best picture.  I really need a new camera as I was borrowing Reid's all weather point and shoot for the majority of these photos.  The rest were taken via iPhone and not the new iPhone, either my ancient 3GS or Paty's 4G.

The last shot photo ever with the scarf.

 Paty wanted this photo for the background.  This is the Greek statue section, where I am taking the photo the Venus de Milo is only about 30 feet behind me.  We took a long time to get this photo right as there was a certain angle Paty wanted in order to get "The Best Parts" of the statue you see.

Paty with her Greek 'Friends'.

 Notice the lack of scarf.

It was never to be seen again.  We realized it at the end of our exploration of the Louvre.  This was maybe 40% into our exploration and after we realized we lost the scarf, we backtracked a LONG ways.  But we did not make it this far.  What is ironic (or not) is earlier in the visit I noticed and even commented to Paty that there was a ton of clothes (hats, gloves, other scarves, kids stuff) dropped all over the museum. 

All in all the Louvre was a memorable experience, lost scarf and incomprehensible conversation with the lost and found lady notwithstanding.

Saturday brought the only event that I had on the official "We Must Do This" agenda:

Parc de Princes Stadium. We were early.

Footy!  Paris Saint-Germain or PSG was hosting Evian (like the water) in a French Ligue 1 match.  We got to the stadium early as we still had to sort out how to pick up our tickets bought on-line.  And also procure a couple of scarves (pictured).

PSG won 4-0 in what turned out to be a very COLD viewing experience.  The stadium is interesting.  They have two tiers holding approximately 48k fans that are covered with the concrete roof.  Reported attendance was 39,500 for the game we attended, it seems to be slightly less than that but not empty by any means.  And the 35k or so fans created quite a bit of noise.  PSG has made it to the knockout rounds of this years Champions League.  With the way the stadium is set up and how it funnels noise towards the pitch, that is going to be an intimidating atmosphere.

Good view of the stadium and how it's setup to keep sound in.

As for the game itself, it was cool to be able to say we saw Zlatan Imbrahimovich in person.  The Swedish striker is one of the handful of best players in this generation, not on par with Messi or Ronaldo but at the top of the tier right below those all timers.

Unfortunately the French league is not exactly challenging.  Zlatan had a goal and an assist in a 2 minute flurry of activity and then proceeded to seem thoroughly disinterested the remainder of the match.  As someone who knows abit about the inner workings of The Zlatan, it was fascinating to watch.

We were able to pre-game with the PSG fans.  We found a bar right outside the stadium that a lot of the supporters frequented.  That bar was also the site of our biggest photographical failing of the entire Paris trip is not the entire year.  About 10 mins after we entered the bar, it was starting to fill up and Paty was finally starting to warm up (it was REALLY cold that night, like 30 degrees) a person came into the pub wearing a vintage Seattle Super Sonics starter jacket.  The classic logo and everything.  Of course I had my Sounder jacket on and wanted a photo.  But before long we lost him in the crowd and when we went to look for this mysterious Sonic fan and/or hipster anti-Stern protestor, he was gone.  A missed photo op for sure.

That will be all for this epicly long Paris post.  We are off to Reims, the home of Champagne, for a schedule three nights on Monday.



Chris's Note: This is a work in progress.  Currently we are in Strasbourg and I'm writing this in fits and starts as I wait for Paty to get ready.  Now it's mostly done unless I decide to add a bit about Notre Dame Cathedral.  Oh and proofread as I haven't done that yet and now Paty seems to be ready again.

Andeluna Cellars: Lunch Heaven

We loved the Andeluna Cellars lunch experience so much I decided it deserved it’s own blog post.

The setting is an open kitchen.

And the view from right outside the kitchen.

 It looks like rain but it never came.

 The menu included six courses and four wine pairings.  The great part of being at a fancy fixed price dinner at a winery is that they are not shy about refilling your glass.

1st Course paired with Andeluna Torrontes 2011.

Second Course, those are a type of beans that almost look like peas, breaded trout and rice croquette.

The Andeluna Reserve Chardonnay 2006 that came with the second course is officially my favorite Chardonnay ever.  I normally do not prefer Chardonnay but this was great.

Paty talked to them about every course.  The chefs were very friendly.

Third Course, Andeluna Reserve Malbec 2009 and pasta with tomatoes and parma.

 

This meat dish and also known as the fourth course was paired with the Andeluna Grand Reserve Bordeaux style blend.  It was a mouthful and went perfectly with the meat.

A palette cleansing drink as the 5^th course.  The official wine flights were over by now, so I switched back to the Chardonnay while Paty continued with more Malbec.

Desert.

The entire cost for two including wine and a tour of the winery after dinner was ARG 540 pesos or about $125US including taxes plus tip.  A bargain.

Mendoza, Argentina's wine country.

If you noticed the tepid tenor of the preceding Buenos Aires post, rest assured that you will not find that in the Mendoza post.  We LOVED Mendoza.

Mendoza feels as if you ‘discovered’ Napa Valley in the early 1970s.  There are supposedly over 1000 wineries in the state and it seems like it.  Wine grapes are everywhere along with the ever present backdrop of the Andes Mountain Range and more specifically the Andes Foothills.  It is hard to describe just how tall the Andes are.  The tallest peak (In the world) outside the Himalayas is Aconcagua at 6,962 meters.  It is located only 70 miles from Mendoza.  Thus the foothills come right up to the city.

The city itself is a really pretty colonial style town.  The main downtown area is an eight block by eight block grid, with a four block park in the middle and four more one block parks in the corners.  There do not seem to be many native trees, but the first settlers of the area made up for it by planting over 2,000,000 trees around town.  Mainly Sycamore trees like we had growing up in Richland, except much larger since the trees are on average over 100 years old.  The effect is that even though it was the beginning of summer in Mendoza, shade was everywhere and we never were particularly hot.  The trees really add a lot of character to the city.

We stayed at Modigliani Art Design Suites, another tripadvisor find.  It was a small boutique hotel with about 12 units.  It was lovely and Martin and Javier that ran the place were extremely helpful in booking any activities we were interested in.  We would stay there again in a second.

The first thing we did after checking in from the 13 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires was head to a small wine tasting at Vines of Mendoza.

Five Malbecs all produced  locally.

After that it was more walking around the city, followed by the soccer game covered in the footy post.

Day 2 I had booked a private driver to take us to wineries for the day.  Mauricio was very friendly and even improvised when I told him basically one day in advance that I wanted to see the Uco Valley and not Maipu.  The Uco Valley is located at 1200-1400 meters above sea level where most of Mendoza is at 800 meters.  It is approximately 60 minutes away, but the drive up into the Andes is beautiful.

Our first stop was Achaval Ferrer, on the way to the Uco Valley.  In retrospect this was our favorite flight of wines that we tasted.  Most of the good wineries in Mendoza are either owned by rich foreigners or joint ventures with foreign companies.  This was no exception, as it was an Italian winemaker/owner and four local Mendoza owners.  Achaval Ferrer owns all the vineyards that produce their Malbec.  Thus they have chosen to drop 80% of the clusters during the green harvest.  This basically forces the entire vines effort over the last two months into ripening only one or two grape clusters.  The effect works, the wines were fabulous.

Before I go on, let me explain about tasting in Mendoza.  It is not like we do in the states.  You ‘get’ to take a tour at every facility before you taste the wines.  The wineries are all very proud of their entire operation, and while wine has been made in Mendoza for over a century it was not until the 1990s when Malbec came to promise as a quality option.  In the past almost all the vineyards produced bulk wine.  The offshoot is they have a decent amount of very old vineyards mostly planted with Malbec next to brand new vineyards.  Most of the wealthy foreigners have also bought vineyards along with building beautiful state of the art wineries from the ground up.  The average winery visit is 60-90 minutes so only plan on 3-4 visits a day and you must have an appointment.
The next stop was Bodegas Salentein.

This winery is solely owned by a Dutch gentleman.  Thus you see a lot of crests and dutch style decorations.  The winery has three buildings separated about about 300 yards and surrounded by vineyards.  The first building is a chapel that looked gorgeous from the outside (we did not go inside).  The second building is a world class museum housing the owners personal art collection in one wing and the gift shop, restaurant and wine bar in the other wing.

The winery, 95% of which is underground.

Underground barrel room designed to resemble the old wine caves.  Really quite pretty with great acoustics.  They sometimes have small concerts here.

Tasting room and our guide.  The tour was in Spanish.  Beautiful Winery, average wines.

The museum building taken from the winery.

Next we went to Andeluna for lunch and our third winery. 

The lunch was so good that I think it is going to get a dedicated post (Chris's Edit: Yep, it did get it's own post.  Click Here.).  Paty and I have come to the conclusion that this was the best lunch and maybe best meal we have ever had. (No exaggeration, the entire experience was superb.)

That was it for our private tour with Mauricio.  Only three wineries, but a very memorable and lovely day.

Spending all this time in the wine country, through this trip and others in Australia, France and the US really reaffirms my desire to find a job in the wine industry.  I believe there is good wine throughout the world that just needs someone to market, expose and sell in order to become much more a part of the public conscious.  Mendoza in general has wine's that are superb and retail for $10, it is really an untapped import market especially when you consider the weakness of the Argentine Peso.

The next day in Mendoza we went from upscale private driver to downscale personal ‘driver’:

Yes that is Paty riding a bike.  Si Se Puede!

Welcome to Mr. Hugo bike rental in Maipu.

They had a wine bike trail set up so these wineries, of which there were at least 12 marked on the map, did not require a reservation.  You just biked on in.  It was a lot of fun, we ended up seeing pretty much the same people at all the wineries since we were all doing the same bike and wine day.

Mevi winery, Andes Foothills, My new favorite white: Torrontes.

Mevi winery, lovely day.

Mevi Winery again, we spent a decent amount of time here as the wine was very good and the tasting room was the first we found that was air conditioned.

Veteran readers of Tobinblog should recognize this old school ratchet style basket press.

After two full days of wine tasting we decided to change it up a bit and signed up for a rafting trip with Argentina Rafting.

Rafting in Argentina’s base camp.

Lunch was already cooking when we arrived.  It was delicious:

Sadly we have no rafting photos as we did not borrow the water proof camera again.  But here is me drinking an Andes beer, in the foothills of the Andes after rafting down the Andes River.

The rafting was fun.  We had five people plus a guide in our boat.  It was advertised as class 2/3 but was more like a glorified float where you got wet.  Which is fine as the scenery was great.  This is the very start of their rafting season, so it might get more adventurous later in the year.  A few years ago the World Championships of slalom kayaking were held in part of the river we rafted down, they left up the cable markers for the course and we could tell some of the markers are located in what is currently in about 3 inches of water.  As the snow melts, the river flow will pick up.

They did have internet at the base camp.  So I ‘watched’ the entire UW v Duke hoops game on Saturday morning via twitter on my iPhone.  Technology has come a long ways.

We liked Mendoza so much, we extended our stay an extra night and ended up doing 5 nights in Mendoza.  Sunday was a pretty relaxed day, nothing outside of restaurants were open during the day.  We tried to catch a cab to cut across town for our 2 PM lunch appointment and literally could not find one, the streets were eerily quiet.  Paty was thrilled to walk the 16 blocks, but lunch was worth it.

I just wrote this post while on the Bus from Mendoza to Valparasio, Chile.  In fact I wrote it entirely at the border crossing into Chile.  I’m not sure what is going on, but we have been sitting in the bus queue that is hardly moving for 2 hours and 4 minutes now.   I suspect they have one total immigration officer working.  The drive crossed over the Andes and the border is only about 1 mile from the pass summit.  It is an exceedingly beautiful place to be stuck.  But stuck we are.

(edit: The stop at the border was 4 hours and 1 minute (not a typo).  Apparently this is an issue they are trying to address by 2014.  If you take a bus from Mendoza to Santiago or Viña del Mar/Valparasio try to book the earliest bus possible as they are the first in line.)

Lastly, if you ever get a chance to go to Mendoza you should seize the day.  We really loved it.  The city itself is lovely and very relaxed plus the wine makes it even better.  I haven’t talked much about the prices, but our hotel was $94/night and most of the wine tours were very cheap or free, the most we paid was $10 but museum admission was included as part of the tour.  Food was really reasonable and a quality bottle of wine could be had for $12, splurging was $20 or $25.