Bubbles & chalk...

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Who knew the too of these would be related? We headed out of Paris yesterday for some change of scenery due to the weather being cold in the city center. Both of us have never been to the Champagne region, but it is very nice.

There are numerous internet cafes here, but the keyboard now is so complicated. In order to finish a sentence with a period, you have to stop and shift a key. then every word that contains a letter a is in a completly different place than the american keyboards. so this very little has already taken ten minutes of the precious paid internet time.

Someone told me that the reason why there are so limited internet cafes is due to the rapid influx of cheap service providers within the last 6 months and they were offering free computers if you sign up for internet. So hopefully there will be a few left before I head back to the states:

When we were in paris earlier this week, we stayed at this posh hotel with probably real gold fixtures everywhere and we were totally out of place. On wednesday night before leaving we ran into Fred Durst from the band Limp Bisquit and the concerierge told us there were two presidents of african countries staying there. It was really funny going to the executive lounge and there were men there that thought they could pick up young chicks but were sadly mistaken. Maybe they were someone famous in their own country but were way too old. It was a beautiful hotel, but we needed to head out to somewhere more reasonable.

Arriving in Reims has been good and we have toured 4 champagne houses since yesterday. Every one is different but the champagne has all been very tasty. The French are VERY particular about their wine and no where else in the world can it be called champagne unless it is from here in the world. Most of the houses have these huge cellars that allow the fermentation to happen over 15 months in these chalk like cellars. It is a constant 25 degrees celcius all the time. And Tattingier mentioned this morning that they have over 22 million bottles in the caves - really impressive. I will post the pics later for that!

More to write later. Thanks for reading...

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Photos

Guess how many
Guess how many bottles are in this wine cave?

More bottles
Each of these Tatitingier bottles cost ~$100+ and will sit in this cave for over 5 years

The biggest bottles
Each of these bottles are the biggest that Mumm Champagne house sell. Each one is special ordered and are over 3,000euros each and contain over 20 regular bottles of wine.