I have to warn you that I have copied information from the Internet to give more information on some of the places we visited and a couple of them got a little lengthy.
September 10th, Monday
Breakfast at the hotel which was basically the same as
yesterday.
We had to have our luggage outside our room by 7:15. We left the hotel at 8:30 with our tour
guide, Thierry, and bus driver, Emanuel.
Unfortunately, Diane’s luggage had been put on the wrong bus so we had
to meet up with that bus to retrieve her luggage. Then it was off for a photo op at the Eiffel
Tower. My favorite site in all of
Paris.
Then off to Chantilly
Chateau in the Champagne Region
The Château de Chantilly is a
historic château located in the town of Chantilly, France, about 50 kilometers
north of Paris. The site comprises two attached buildings: the Petit Château
built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency, and the Grand Château, which was
destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s.
Beautiful. We spent two hours there and I could have
stayed longer.
Then a 10 minute ride to the
City of Chantilly for lunch.
La Cour Povee Creperie
Apple Cider
Bob: Ham, cheese and egg crepe/gallete
Iris – Smoked salmon
crepe/gallete
Dessert: Crepe with chocolate sauce and Chantilly Cream
Back to the bus for a 2 hour
drive to Reims. After checking into the
hotel we rested for a little while and then went to dinner
L’Aambic
Bob – Wine – Bordeaux
Filet D’Aqneau Cro – Lamb
Pomme Verte Sorbet
Iris – Verra Brouilly
Cote DeVeau
Vanilla Ice Cream
This was a quaint little
restaurant with a couple of tables on the main floor. Our table was in the basement which was like
a wine cellar. We were in the far back
table and after a while it got pretty hot back there.
September 11, Tuesday
Breakfast at the hotel – same as
yesterday except I added some fruit and a cup of tea.
We had a group tour of Reims
this morning. We met a local guide who
took us first to the Basilica of St. Remi.
The obscure[2]
origins of the great abbey at Reims lie in a little 6th-century chapel
dedicated to Saint
Christopher. The abbey's success
was founded on its acquisition of the relics of St. Remy in 553; subsequently
gifts poured in upon it from pious donors. By the 9th century the abbey
possessed about 700 domains and was perhaps the most richly endowed in France.
It seems probable that secular priests were the first guardians of the relics,
but were succeeded by the Benedictines. From 780 to 945 the archbishops
of Reims served as its abbots. At
the abbey Charlemagne received Pope Leo III.
In 1005 the abbot
Aviard undertook to rebuild the church of St-Remy, and for twenty years the
work went on uninterruptedly before vaulting collapsed, no doubt from
insufficient buttressing. Abbot Theodoric erected the magnificent
surviving basilica which Pope Leo IX dedicated in 1049 and to which he granted
many privileges. The abbey library and its schools were of such high repute
that Pope Alexander
III wrote a commendatory letter
to the Abbot Peter, which survives.
The years of
around 1170 to 1180 brought further rebuilding, this time to the choir. The
purpose of replacing the short eastern section of the Romanesque church was to
create a grander and more spacious interior for the shrine of St Remy. The
shrine was detached from its previous location, next to the altar, and moved
further east.[3]
The archbishops
of Reims and several princes, Carloman, brother of Charlemagne, Henri d'Orléans (d. about 1653), and kings Louis IV of
France and Lothair were buried in
the monastery.
Among the
illustrious later abbots, all drawn from the higher nobility, may be mentioned:
Henri de Lorraine
(1622–1641), who affiliated the abbey to the Congregation
of St. Maur; Jacques-Nicolas
Colbert (1665), later archbishop of
Rouen; Charles
Maurice Le Tellier (1680–1710);
and Joseph de Rochechouart,
appointed abbot by the king in 1745.
Many valuable
objects from the abbey were looted in the French Revolutionary period and the Holy Ampulla of the coronation of the kings of France kept in the abbey
was destroyed in 1793, but the 12th-century stained glass remains.
The Abbey of
Saint-Remi, together with the nearby cathedral of Notre-Dame de
Reims and Palace of Tau, became a UNESCO World
Heritage Site in 1991.
When we reached the Basilica
this man came running out as the guide was telling us about the architecture of
the building and told us we couldn’t go inside because there was a mass going
on. After much back and forth between
him and the guide he finally let us in on the condition that we be very quiet. Mass was being celebrated in a small chapel and
we were very quiet and didn’t disturb them at all. It was a beautiful cathedral. Now here is where it got a little strange.
The man who didn’t want to let us in sort of took over showing us some
things that most tourists don’t get to see.
One was an ark that we believe holds the remains of someone and is only
taken out once a year and paraded through the town. The other was he took us to the basement
which contained stone troughs which Bob believes were used to hold bodies
temporarily at some point of time.
Then on to the Gothic-style
Reims Cathedral.
Reims Cathedral, also called the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at Reims, cathedral located in
the city of Reims, France, on the Vesle River east-northeast of Paris. Reims was the site
of 25 coronations of the kings of France, from Louis VIII in 1223 to Charles X in 1825,
including the crowning of Charles VII in 1429 in the presence of Joan of Arc. The cathedral, which was begun in 1211 under the auspices of Archbishop
Aubry de Humbert and designer Jean d’Orbais, was modeled on Chartres Cathedral (begun
about 1194) and was intended to replace an earlier church destroyed by fire in
1210. The main construction was overseen by four different architects and
lasted some 80 years; expansions and decorative work continued on the church
for centuries.
Reims Cathedral incorporated several new
architectural techniques, notably bar tracery. It has a total
finished length of 489 feet (149.2 metres)—about 26 feet (8 metres) longer than
Chartres—with an interior length of 455 feet (138.7 metres) and a nave reaching 377 feet
(115 metres). The twin towers in the west facade have a height of 266 feet (81
metres). The chevet (eastern end), with its five relatively large chapels, is nearly the
same width as the transept (201 feet [61.3 metres]), giving the cathedral an unusually compact,
unified appearance. This unity is emphasized by the use of nearly identical
window types in the aisle and clerestory stories, as well as the complementary rose windows in the west
facade and central portal and those in the transepts’ facades. Reims is richly
decorated with elegant masonry sculpture (particularly the exterior) and
exceptional stained-glass windows, making it one of the artistic masterpieces
of the French High Gothic period.
The cathedral’s historic site, which was
added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1991, includes the former Abbey of
Saint-Rémi (begun about 1170 and containing the remains of the 5th–6th century archbishop St. Remigius) and the archiepiscopal Tau Palace (reconstructed in the 17th
century). Restoration was undertaken in the 20th century after the cathedral
was seriously damaged by shelling during World War I.
We then had some free time for lunch which we had at
L’Apostrophe
We shared
Risotto Poulet
Dim Sum and fish plat
Ice Tea for both of us
Then it was off Mercier Champagne one of notable wine
cellars in Champagne to enjoy a tasting of famous bubbly. I’m not a champagne person but this was
pretty good. We bought two bottles to
bring home.
Dinner tonight was outrageous just because of all we
ate. It was a tour dinner.
Restaurand LaPaix
Warm Goat Cheese Salad
Chicken and Rice
Profiteroles
While we were being served Rachel, one of our tour members,,
saw listed on the blackboard 3 mussel dishes. She started talking about them
and they sounded so good. Se we asked
Thierry if we could order them as long as we paid for them. Of course we could. So Rachel, Bob and I ordered this big bowl of
mussels. They were delicious. I only ate half of my chicken, no rice and
only half of the profiteroles. They were
delicious but after all the mussels I just couldn’t finish dessert.
Off to bed as we have an early morning tomorrow.
