Paris, Post Tour de Frane

We’ve had a great time exploring Paris for the past several days, catching up on the work that absolutely has to be attended to now, and storing away the other work projects that can wait until we get home.  It is fun to just wander and the small side streets are what we like the most.  The Latin Quarter is full of them and you can get lost for hours.  And we’ve taken a few side trips, one to Reims just to see the famous cathedral and one overnight ride to a very pretty valley just outside of Paris just to get on the bike.

Oh, and I should mention at the outset that Hancock Hughey LLP are pleased to announce the opening of their Paris office.  We’ll staff the office only when needed, so if you want an appointment please give us 2 week’s notice and your credit card number so we can pay for our disbursements and travel expenses.  Look for more on that later.  :)

Reims

About 45 minutes from Paris by TGV, Reims is home to France’s best example of a gothic cathedral, the Cathedral de Notre Dame (their all called “Notre Dame”)… I can remember studying the cathedral's architecture and history way back when, so many years ago, before I studied law.  It is an inspiring structure and has so much history.  Pictures do a better job than I do, so I’ll leave you with some photos:

They're doing some restoration work on the front facade, so the rose window and the front
can't be seen today

The flying buttresses were perfected when Notre Dame in Paris was built, and
they were put to good use in Reims

Gardens near the Palace of Tau, which is where the church Bigs
got to hang out so they didn't mix with the littles...

"Wait, I need that part!"

One of the three main portals

Reims is also the heart of Champagne country in France, so we took the opportunity to visit the caves of Taittinger.  It was a fascinating visit, mostly interesting to go through the caves (an incredible labyrinth of tunnels dug in the chalk structures under the city of Reims).  The caves are cool and have many millions of bottles of champagne in-process.  But it is the history of the caves and their role in housing the citizens of Reims during both WWI and WWII that I found most interesting.  The caves are carved out of chalk, which is soft but stable and absorbs moisture and hence is vital to production of champagne.  But because it is soft there are many, many carvings done by the locals who were holed up there during the wars.

Entering the Taittinger caves

Racked bottles -- one of the first steps of the methode champenoise

All of the wine produced in these caves is done by hand -- most champagne available today is produced in a similar way, but by automated machines that rotate the racked bottles.  But in these caves it is done the old way with hand rotation (prior to removal of the "plug" of yeast after fermentation).  The bottles produced here have a long neck and don't look like what I have associated with a champagne bottle.  The price per bottle of this stuff starts at about 100 Euro.

There are many stairways to who-knows-where?

One of hundreds of caves full of bottles during the "pre-racking" fermentation

These caves were originally made by monks, so there are some little chapels that
work just as well as spots to ferment wine as they apparently did to save souls

Racked bottles

Carved into the walls during WWI

These bottles have had the yeast plug removed (it is frozen then blasted out by
the fermentation) and the traditional cork attached.

A beautiful gothic arch, probably dating to the 5th century

The caves seem to run on forever

Back to Paris on the TGV -- the Reims to Paris TGV actually hit about 375 kph (around 225 mph)!

On the bike again!

On the train to Chamonix to watch stage 19 of the Tour we met a guy who works for Hewlett-Packard in Paris who is big in to cycling (he was on his way to the tour, too).  He mentioned that if we had time we might consider a ride out to the Vallee de Chevreuse, which is about 50 km outside of Paris and super rural.  Both of us wanted to get on the bike, so we put it together, hucked it down 6 flights of stairs to the RER station (the local train, not to be confused with the Metro), and hopped on the train to St. Remy les Chevreuse.  Our HP buddy also recommended that we stay at some fancy abbey, so we decided to make a 2-day trip out of it.

We grabbed a route off a cycling GPS site, then modified it somewhat to suit our needs, and hit the road in St. Remy.  We had a route of about 75 km planned and it was a beautiful day.  And our HP guy was spot on – it is a perfect place to ride.  But it soon became evident that this area is kind of like the exclusive suburbs of Paris.  Rural with huge chateaus.  Nice.  I think that I want an address here once the Hancock Hughey Paris office takes off.

At the train station in St. Remy les Chevreuse; the bike is
pretty stripped down for just an overnight ride.  Kind of fun to ride "light."

The new Hancock Hughey offices near St. Remy

A beautiful day for a ride

Km after km of quiet roads

And small villages

And getting lost...

One must eat...our standard fare on this trip at least

We got lost a bunch of times but eventually made it to the abbey.  Cool place and very fancy but we were definitely out of place on our bike; had the feeling that the folks at the hotel were peering down their noses at us.  I asked about a place to store the bike for the night and that caught them by surprise; I don't know that they've ever had visitors arrive by bike.  We ended up locking it to a tree...

The main courtyard at the abbey

The view from our "attic" window over the grounds

The bar 

An old, abandoned church

The rose window was surely beautiful at one time

The grounds near the lake

The abbey from across the lake.  This is where we had our picnic dinner.  Not a bad way to close the day.

This is actually the breakfast room

Most guests arrive by transportation other than bikes.  I guess that's why
they thought we were nuts...

Hancock Hughey LLP will get one of these for our daily commute

Another view of the abbey as we were leaving in the rain

But being outside the norm has never bothered me.  So we checked into our room and told them to cancel our dinner reservation (I didn’t have proper dress for their standards (no kidding)).  The abbey is totally beautiful.  We walked all around and it and the grounds are stunning.  We decided that since we were off the dinner invitation list, we’d buy a bottle of wine and some bread and cheese, etc. and have dinner by the lake.  It was an excellent end to a great day of riding.  It felt good to get back on the bike.

The abbey was a quiet as could be at night and we slept well.  Paris is, if anything, noisy.  Really, really noisy. At all hours.  Maybe if you live in the city its no big deal. But coming from the Sherm where the loudest sound at night is the odd coyote or a frog, the sounds of the city are tough to get used to. So a quiet night was much appreciated.  But apart from the quiet the abbey is in serious need of some work on its infrastructure.  Nothing worked in our cheap attic room and there was nothing but scalding water from both cold and hot taps.  Even the toilet flushed scalding hot water.  Ironic in so many ways. 

In the morning it was raining pretty hard and we wanted to fill our bidons for the ride back to Paris.  But not with scalding hot water.  So we had to ask the kitchen if they could give us cold water.  I think that they were pretty sure we were freaks.  Good for them.  Probably right. 

We're off to Iceland tomorrow.  We are still having some "issues" with the camera / computer connection and dumping photos onto the computer has been a challenge.  We'll try to do blog updates from Iceland, but we'll see how we do with fixing the issues.

Au revior for now.