Category: Trips

2 days 'bout the harbour

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Further thoughts on our trip to Halifax this past weekend:

  • Hard to believe now, but on Friday morning the G20 seemed like a non-event. We left super-early for the airport and got there in six minutes. Fortunately, waiting in Porter‘s lounge is a lot better than waiting around at Pearson: free drinks, shortbread cookies, wi-fi, comfy chairs and — for some reason — no screaming kids.
  • Flying Porter, even though it takes an extra hour to Halifax, is worth it. Free drinks, actual lunch, friendly service, tons of leg room and doesn’t actually feel any longer than a direct flight.
  • Taxis from the airport to downtown Halifax are always expensive, but we don’t mind paying just a little more now that we’ve found Crystal Limousines. There’s something extra-sweet about a nice car, lots of leg room and a cold bottle of water waiting for you when you get off a plane. They’re now on our speed dial whenever we fly in.
  • Our hotel was on a lake called Chocolate Lake. So it was called the Chocolate Lake hotel. The lobby smelled of chocolate. A chocolate lab lives there. If they ever build a beer pool I’m moving in.
  • As we tended to enjoy the nice weather having a Garrison on their patio, the bartender became our best friend. Two minutes after we arrived we took a seat in the sun, looked out over the lake, caught up with friends and slid lazily into vacation mode.
  • We made our way downtown, strolled along the waterfront to take in the preparations for the Canadian navy’s 100th birthday and visit by the Queen, and picked up my parents at their hotel. Crazy coincidence though: walking in to the hotel we bumped into a guy who I last saw ten years ago when he was a co-op student at Delano. It was his first trip to Halifax, and we wouldn’t have even seen each other except for the earthquake last week. Anyway, it’s a long story, but it one of those coincidences that makes you shake your head at the cosmos.
  • That night my parents, my brother and his wife joined us for dinner at Bish. I have to say, for all the talk of it being one of the best restaurants in the city I wasn’t very impressed. My steak was overdone and it took 40 minutes to bring us our mains (during which our wine glasses sat empty for 20 minutes). I wasn’t the only one underwhelmed either. It was nice to catch up with my family, though, if only for a few hours.
  • We continued the evening with my brother and sister-in-law though, walking past a great many pubs and bars crammed full of drunk douchebags and scary cougars (it was fleet week, after all) before settling on a familiar standby: the Old Triangle. While we were there a bunch of secret service-looking people showed up; turns out the prime minister of the Netherlands was in there having a drink. We wondered why he needed a security detail…what drunk Nova Scotian is going to recognize the Dutch prime minister?? Anyhoo. We got home around 1:30…which, by Halifax standards isn’t that late, but I’m ooooooooold now.
  • In spite of being an old man past his bedtime, we got up and had brunch at a friend’s house with her husband, kid, baby, dog and mildly retarded sister. We had a tour of their beautiful new house, ate breakfast on their deck and left with some art which now hangs on our fridge.
  • And then, the reason we were in Halifax in the first place: our friend’s wedding. I’ve no room to list all the highlights, but they included fortuitous weather, wheel spinning, a toothbrush & Dan Marino jersey, flowing wine, Thriller choreography, belligerent Dan, road beers and a near-exhibition of “Murphy Girl drunk”. I also managed to catch snippets of Ghana beating the US and news of violence in Toronto.
  • Notes on the DJ’s music selection: whoever made a nu-metal remix of “Barrett’s Privateers” should be horsewhipped. Also: it’s a universal truth that Trooper will come out earlier at an east coast wedding than anywhere else.
  • Since we got even less sleep that night, there was little to do the next morning but meet friends for brunch at the hotel, take a limo back to the airport and fly home. Safe, sound and regretting that we didn’t have more time in Halifax. Soon, my pretty.

Respite

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Just back from a semi-whirlwind trip to Halifax for a friend’s wedding. In addition to the ceremony itself, which was a ton of fun, we also squeezed in brunch with friends at their beautiful new home, dinner at Bish with my parents, brother and sister-in-law and even some down time on a few patios.

Aaaaaaaaaand then we returned to find Toronto in some kind of lock-down mode…stores closed, violent protests happening a few blocks away, upsetting displays from punks and police alike. I’m too tired to think much about it…just going to go to sleep and hope the city’s back to normal tomorrow morning.

I'm okay with frogs. Not so much with the boils.

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On Friday I’ll be flying to Nova Scotia. While I’m happy to get away, to see my family and celebrate a dear friend’s wedding, I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed to be missing the G20, though I suspect it’ll all just fizzle into a big billion-dollar pile of nothing.

Then again, with the earthquake today, massive police force in the streets and tornadoes in the area, maybe it’s best we get out of the town before Lake Ontario turns to blood.

"Better a drop of the extraordinary than an ocean of the ordinary."

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I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve lived in Toronto since 1997 and I’ve never seen Niagara Falls. One of the natural wonders of the world ninety minutes away and I’d never gone to see it. I’d also never visited the Niagara wine country, but that’s a little less shocking since it was only a few years ago I began to care that there was a wine region nearby. So, we thought we’d cure both ills at once. We took the day off, rented a car and set sail.

The weather wasn’t bad when we left Toronto, passing Mississauga and Oakville (first time past highway 403 woo!) and crossing the lovely skyway bridge to…to…oh my GOD Hamilton is ugly. Ugh. I closed my eyes until we reached Beamsville. We stopped there as I had it on good authority that there are three fantastic wineries there, practically next door to each other: Fielding, Hidden Bench and Thirty Bench.

As we walked into Fielding (whose tagline constitutes the subject of this blog post, by the way) Nellie said that it felt to her like going to church. We’ve never tried a Fielding wine we didn’t love, and their building is rather like a cathedral. The staff was awfully nice, very helpful and fairly convincing: we tasted nine wines, and left with bottles of the Lot 17 Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Meritage, and White Conception.

Hidden Bench, just around the corner, was different: smaller, quieter, more intimate. The lady working the tasting counter took a chunk out of her day to talk all the about the wines, the history of the winery and the vines. Their wine tasted so clean that we ended buying three bottles: a Fume Blanc (which Nellie realized later we’d drunk before) and two bottles of their Terroir Caché Meritage. We’ll drink one soon, and stash one for a few years.

We loved Thirty Bench for two reasons: the clever tasting notes (see above) and the more structured tasting. We’d enjoyed the benefits of near-empty tasting rooms at all three spots, but at 30 Bench they brought us to the comfy tasting bar and threw seven (!) samples at us. We settled on their Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, and left startled that we’d so far collected more red than white.

The lady at Hidden Bench had recommended a spot called August for lunch, and when a local with good taste recommends a spot for lunch, you go. We weren’t disappointed; my pasta with andouille sausage in a pesto sauce was very good, as was Nellie’s salad. Happily she was able to get a glass of Daniel Lenko white Cabernet to go with it, and I had a glass of Creekside Pinot Grigio. All was right with the world.

On we drove (don’t worry, I was sipping and spitting, not drinking) to Niagara on the Lake. We checked in to the one hotel I could find in NotL that didn’t fit the dictionary definition of “frou-frou”: The Shaw Club. Beautiful hotel, beautiful room, just top-notch all around. Highly recommended if you’re staying in that town. That town, by the way, is a little too precious…a walk up and down the main strip was like one long gift shop. On the stroll back to the hotel we decided to stop in at the Olde Angel Inn and get at least a bit of the local quaffing culture. Despite my tasty Amsterdam Two-Fisted stout, I was miserable as a headache was hitting me with both barrels. We went back to the room to relax before dinner.

Dinner was at Stone Road Grille, the de facto NotL dining champion according to Chowhound. The joint was packed when we arrived and, despite the fact that we’d made reservations a month ago, we had to wait half an hour for a table. My mood might have been soured had the host not been a bizarre combination of charming and unhinged…if I didn’t know better I’d swear he was from Newfoundland.

Anyway, the meals. In a word: superb. I started with — and I’m quoting from the menu here — the scallops wrapped in smoked duck breast bacon, sweet onion puree, mache salad, icewine salmis vinaigrette, paired with…well, with the giant glass of Fielding Pinot Gris the host had poured me while we waited. Nellie had a truffle and asparagus risotto paired with a 13th street sparkling white. Nellie declared it the best risotto she’d ever tasted. As for me, I don’t even really like scallops and I loved this.

My main was the Charlie Baker fried chicken with buttermilk potato puree, braised leeks, sauteed greens and bubbly sauce, while Nellie had the grilled flat iron steak frites with sauce béarnaise and garlicky beans. We sought out a wine that would work with both (!) and settled on a 2007 Southbrook “Whimsy” Cabernet Franc. And wow, did it work. We were still enjoying it when our strawberry & rhubarb clafouti arrived.

Perhaps the oddest part of the night was when we asked for a cab. Despite being warned by T-Bone about the scarcity of cabs in the city, we were hopeful…and we were to be disappointed. The nearest one was 30-40 minutes away. So, much to our amazement, the semi-crazy host pulled around in a giant purple minivan and offered to drive us home. Weird, but pretty cool too. More than made up for the long wait for a table, and also made for a great laugh the next morning.

Day two started with an excellent breakfast at the Shaw Club’s restaurant before checking out and driving south to see Niagara Falls itself.

Never mind the schlocky shops on the way into town, the outrageous cost of parking, the mind-numbing tackiness of the gift shops you’re forced through to gain a vantage point…the falls are amazing. I could probably stand at the river’s edge all day and watch the water plunge over, but not today…it was freezing, and spitting rain. We stayed long enough for me to really soak it in, get some pictures and get even wetter from the spray, and then walked back to the car. A sudden storm burst just long enough to soak us as we ran to the car. It wouldn’t be the last time.

We did have a break in the rain long enough to visit Ravine Vineyards, another recommendation. Their tasting room wasn’t quite open yet so we had some tasty treats at their bakery first. Once the sun was over the yardarm we picked up a bottle each of their 2006 Cabernet Franc and their Redcoat blend, and got some recommendations from their staff about the next stop on our tour.

Southbrook‘s beautiful LEED-certified building suits their organic and biodynamic wine. We’d already decided to pick up a bottle of the Whimsy, since we’d loved it the night before, and while we expected to walk out with their rosé, we instead left with a bottle of their “Fresh” white blend, which won us both over during the tasting.

As we’d pulled into Southbrook the weather had turned vile. Rather than visit one more we decided to take nature’s hint and just hit the road. When the rain comes in sideways, it’s time to go home. It was tough going just outside of Niagara on the Lake because of the driving rain, and then on the Skyway as we passed Hamilton the wind actually blew our car halfway into the next lane. All the dreary, windy driving made us both sluggish, so we dropped the wine, dropped the car, helped an Australian man figure out how to adjust the seat in his rental and happily deposited ourselves on our couch and admired our new wine collection.

13 bottles of wine, 3 great meals and a wonder of the world…not bad for 28 hours.

[     Rut     ] –> Me

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Wow. What a game. Tense. Awesome, but tense.

This past week was frenetic; I’ve definitely earned my day off tomorrow. We’re headed out for a wine excursion in Niagara-On-The-Lake, the first time we’ve left the city since we went to France last fall. The weather is supposed to be shit but I don’t care. I need this. And I need some good food. And I need some fresh air. And I need a comfy hotel bed.

And I need to be back for game five.

Scarce heard amid the guns below

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As readers of this blog would know, I’ve been trying over the last couple of years to gain a better understanding of the two world wars. While I often marvel at the spectacle of war, the notion of it makes me sick…old men sending young men to die for ridiculous ends, equating war-making with jingoistic patriotism, etc.  My attempt to understand it has already given me a better sense of how and why these wars unfolded, but what I’ve read has been a historical look back. I had little appreciation for what it must have felt like to a soldier. I count myself very fortunate that I’ve never been in or in any way near a war zone.

Our recent trip to France helped me get some of that perspective. The ground at Vimy still torn up from shelling. The long, exposed run at Juno Beach with nothing between you and a German bunker but luck and prayer. The trenches at Beaumont-Hamel, with enemies almost impossibly close together. In each of these places I stopped, tried to put myself in the place of a soldier, and each time felt nervous, even frightened. I actually got physically tense. I tried to imagine myself running up that beach or climbing the firing steps, and I’d get a lump in my throat. I kept thinking to myself, how could anyone do this? How could someone charge with shells exploding around and tracers whizzing past? Just typing this now the memory is still vivid, and the lump has come back.

Whatever atrocities are committed by front-line soldiers — and those atrocities are many — it’s not their choice to be there. The tragic, unfair, unholy situation in which they find themselves spurs some to evil, some to heroism, but most simply — incredibly — to bravery. Those are who we saw buried by the thousands in the valley of the Somme this summer, and whose names were etched on the side of the Vimy memorial. Those are who we remember today.

An allied cemetery just south of Arras, on the way to Beaumont-Hamel, one of many we saw driving through the Somme valley. Mainly British and Australian, but we found Canadians there as well. Most markers had no name or nationality, and simply read A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.
Serre Road Cemetery No. 2. An allied cemetery just south of Arras, on the way to Beaumont-Hamel, one of many we saw driving through the Somme valley. Mainly British and Australian, but we found Canadians there as well. Most markers had no name or nationality, and simply read 'A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God'.

France: day 11, 12, 13 & 14

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DAY 11

So much for sleeping in. The alarm went off at 6:45, and a room-service breakfast later we were picking up RER train tickets at Musee D’Orsay. About half an hour later we’d reached the Chateau de Versailles.

The teeming throng leading up to the palace should have been a warning. It was…well, a bit much. Spectacular, to be sure, but almost too big and too ornate and most certainly too crowded. At points I was wading through crowds of Japanese tourists to get anywhere.

The Hall of Mirrors was of particular interest to us, given the historical importance, but this was among the only shots we could get before being overrun by tour groups. We continued on in the loop around the inside of the building, but despite a few quiet moments to admire the palace’s art, it just didn’t live up to the expectations we had.

After fleeing the building we explored the gardens, or at least part of them.

They were truly enormous, and despite walking for over and hour we covered only a corner of the grounds. Had we known before we started that you could rent Segways to get around the ground, despite what it cost, we might’ve gone that route. Funnily enough, though, after we walked five minutes from the Chateau itself into the gardens, we were completely alone. I guess people only care to take picture of each other standing in front of Marie Antoinette’s dresser.

I can understand why people say Versailles is a must-see, but I can see now why Parisiens try to dissuade visitors from going there. The friend we met at Les Blotteries suggested we try Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte instead, as it’s like a more condensed version with smaller crowds. Anyway, back to the RER train we went, and had some charcuterie for lunch. By the way, at this point I was drinking coffee at the end of every meal. In the previous week I’d drunk as much coffee as I’d consumed in the entire previous 34 years.

We got back to the hotel for some much needed relaxation and recuperation (I’d hurt my shin somehow, and Nellie was nursing various blisters), and got a surprise. Presumably to make up for the earlier mishaps our hotel’s front desk had sent up a bottle of champagne and two glasses. We hastily throw the whole thing down our necks and proceed to the Louvre. Drunk art woo!!

Two years ago when we visited the Louvre we only had an hour or so, so we sped through to the vital locations: the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. This time we had no such time constraints and took a more leisurely pace. Sneaking in through the Lion’s Gate entrance was a great idea, and we soon landed in the great halls of Spanish and Italian painters, far less crowded than the narrow spaces of the Musee D’Orsay.

As usual, there were great heaping crowds of gawkers at the Mona Lisa. I all but hurried past it to reach The Raft of the Medusa in the next room. We saw the rest of the paintings in that wing, and then went upstairs to see the Dutch, Flemish, German and French works.

By the time we finished our feet were killing us, and the pain in my shin (felt almost like shin splints) had become almost unbearable, so we limped home and relaxed for a few hours. We didn’t want to go far for dinner, so the bistrot around the corner seemed ideal. It was a great meal too: I had smoked salmon and dorado with a bottle of white. Nellie had a duo of chevre and a steak. My molten chocolate dessert was very good, as was Nellie’s trio of creme brulee. It was all in a nice relaxed atmosphere too, as evidenced by the local couple who arrived just before 10:00 with their Jack Russell in tow, who sat under the table while they ate. Coffee or not, neither of us could stay awake for long and we dragged our tired bones home and into bed.

DAY 12

We now decided to enter the relaxation portion of the trip. We slept in, at least as much as possible given the noisy street outside. We ordered another room-service breakfast, lay about reading and kept off our feet for a while. By late morning we thought we’d take a quick, casual stroll over toward the shopping area on Rue St-Peres, stopping in at the Paris installation of M0851, then walked a little further. Suddenly we realized how close we were to the Jardins du Luxembourg and decided to just go there.

After sitting in the sun in front of the pool for a little while, we also realized we were close to a lunch place recommended by a colleague at work: Cuisine de Bar. A few minutes later we were eating tartines (like an open-faced sandwich) in a tiny little spot. Cool little find that I simply would not have known about but for that recommendation, and highly recommended if you’re looking for a good, fast, inexpensive lunch in Paris.

We walked (sloooowly) back to the hotel and chilled for a bit, then went out to do a little more shopping and had a few drinks on the patio at the hotel’s bar. No sense running all over Paris; we’d seen most of the sights, and we were determined to squeeze in a little R&R. And anyway, I’m on the limp.

For dinner we ended up returning to the Cafe des Lettres, where we ate Monday night, because we’d liked it so much. Same great food, same lovely patio, same attractive servers. Just as good the second time!

DAY 13

Our various tweaks and injuries didn’t stop us from taking one last swing around the city and exploring a new neighbourhood. We took the metro down to Montparnasse, gawked at the tower and then strolled through the cemetery.Serge Gainsbourg’s grave was covered in shlock.

We tried to visit the catacombs, but they were closed because of vandalism. Boo. In light of this defeat we opted to console ourselves with food and, more importantly, beer. We walked up the street to a place recommended on BeerAdvocate called Academie de la Biere. I had an Erdinger, Nellie had a Westmalle Brune and then we shared a bottle of French beer called La Goudale.

We kept walking up, passing again through the Jardin du Luxembourg and into the Latin Quarter. We tried to make a reservation at Fish for a return visit, but they were all booked up for the night. We ran some last-minute errands, had a dessert and coffee, did an Air Canada web check-in, started packing and relaxed in the room for a while. There was nothing left to do but eat dinner, finish packing, fill out the room service menu and set the alarm. Dinner was a quick, quiet affair at a little spot around the corner. Nothing fancy, nothing remarkable, just a decent meal in a neighbourhood spot.

DAY 14

We woke up far too early for our liking and got our stuff into a cab. And what a cab! There’s something unsettling about riding in a minibus on the peripherique highway around Paris listening to Boney M, especially when you’re doing 150 and weaving through traffic like a lunatic. On the plus side, it’s nice to be the world record holder for the fastest trip ever recorded from Saint-Germain to Charles de Gaulle airport. Turns out all the speed was for naught as our flight was delayed by over an hour, but we eventually got on our flight and started the long flight west.

On the flight home moments and memories from the previous two weeks flashed through my now-numb brain. The beauty of the Loire Valley. The wonderful hosts we’d met at tiny inns and B&Bs around the country. The cathedrals book-ending our drive, at Chartres and Reims. The remnants of war in Normandy, Vimy and the Somme valley. The perfect weekend in Champagne, especially as it was spent with my brother. Even lunch at the brasserie in Chartres on our first day, which seemed a distant memory, which I remembered in the same fond way I remember the first day of university or starting a new job: the beginning of a new adventure.

I think it will be some time before I can see it all clearly, and recognize what an amazing trip it was. Upon returning to Toronto we dove straight back into work and attempted to get our lives back in game shape, going through the mechanics of recovering from a two-week vacation. As such, it doesn’t feel yet as if we had an adventure…just that we were away. But later, once all the chaotic brush strokes of this trip have been laid out on a single canvas in my mind, I’ll have a work of art to return to, to admire, for the rest of my life.

And that’s why we go.

France: day 9 & 10

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DAY 9

We left Manoir de Montflambert right after breakfast, taking a bottle of their champagne with us. We saw a fox not long after leaving the manoir, before we got back on the highway, pretty much our only wildlife spotting of the trip. No wild boars, boo. Carmen took us down a bunch of back roads, then the Autoroute, then more back roads. Finally we returned the car to CDG about 15 minutes late, for which we got charged an extra day.

We piled into a cab and headed downtown, using limited French to have a conversation with cab driver until we reached our hotel. Our room wasn’t ready so we explored the neighbourhood — Saint Germain — a bit. We picked a nearby cafe for lunch, sitting and watching Paris go by as we drank wine and coffee.

I was excited to be staying in the 6th. I won’t even get into all the headaches we had with the hotel, though if you’re really interested, it’s on record over at TripAdvisor. Instead, I’ll just talk about what a fantastically convenient location it was, close to everything, surrounded by nice restaurants and pretty shops like this one across street.

We walked over to the Latin Quarter and had drinks at some sort of overpriced bar in a pedestrian mall (with a waitress who, ahem, defied gravity) and explored the ‘hood a bit before heading back toward our hotel. For dinner we settled on a place around the corner from our hotel, Cafe des Lettres. We loved this place. The inside looks like a library, all bookcases and dark wood and leather-bound chairs, but we saw outdoors on their huge garden patio. The menus were written inside the first pages of journals they brought to us, and patrons were welcome to write (or draw) whatever they wanted in the remaining pages. After we ordered we flipped through others’ thoughts and left some of our own. The food was excellent, the servers were very friendly (and let me continue ordering in French, only switching to English when stumbled once) and terribly attractive, and the weather was as perfect as it had been for the whole trip. We enjoyed our evening in the warm Parisian air and strolled back to the hotel, pleased as punch.

Speaking of attractive Parisians, I felt kind of bad for Nellie. While there were stunning Parisian women everywhere one looked, she saw very few attractive French men. Something about them all being too short. Anyway, it was a terrible imbalance. Tragic. But she held up like a trooper.

DAY 10

The next morning we decided to visit the Musee D’Orsay, an obvious choice as it was a block from our hotel.

The vast lineup to enter the building tipped us off that crowds would be bad, so we thought we’d be smart and head directly to the third floor where all the top-flight paintings were. Turns out this was everybody’s plan, which made it hard to enjoy the art. There would be no room to stand in front of a painting and admire it because of the steady stream of tourist yobs taking each others’ picture in front of it. With flash, of course. It led to a speed walk around the top floor, and only slightly more casual walks on the remaining floors.

Surprisingly, my favourite thing in the whole musee might have been the view that greets you when you enter the main hall. D’Orsay was a train station, and it’s retained the feeling of a grand hall, rather than the palatial feel of the Louvre. We wrapped up there and grabbed some lunch at a pub on Saint-Germain that has a decent beer selection. Unfortunately the rest of it was a touristy mess, but you can’t win ’em all. Clearly the previous night had spoiled us.

In the late afternoon we decided to go for a walk toward the Eiffel tower. The last time we visited Paris was during the World Cup of Rugby (hosted by France), and there was a giant rugby ball suspended from the tower, which made our resident photographer very unhappy. This time she was determined to get an unspoiled shot. She did, but probably not from the angle she was expecting.

The reason I wanted to walk down that far was to cross the river and visit the Place du Trocadero. We sat on the grass and watched the fountains, snapping picture after picture of the tower from our perfect vantage. No aggressive trinket vendors, no loud scammers, no bumbling crowds…just peace and quiet and a clear sight line. Sure, there were lots of people hanging out on the grass, but it’s an ocean of calm compared to the chaos across the river, underneath the tower.

During our walk back to the hotel I step into a hole in the sidewalk and jam my shin, which ends up sucking pretty badly later. Also, I paid 12 Euros for one hour of internet access, and I felt like I lost a tiny bit of my soul, so our luck was starting to turn. But dinner at Fish Wine Bar won the day. It was a fairly Anglo place (a Kiwi bartender greeted us, a lady from New York chatted with us at the bar, etc.), enough so that the older gentleman seated next to us said something rather rude en Francais about the annoying foreigners not bothering to learn the language. He thought I couldn’t understand him, but the stink-eye I gave him made him realize that wasn’t the case. Anyway, we weren’t letting that spoil our night…our food was excellent, and the wine predictably wonderful. Another great find. We wondered when our luck would run out.

By this point we were both pretty much in love with Paris. The only thing that bothered me about it was the smoking. Living in Toronto’s spoiled us; as smokey as I find it sometimes, it’s nothing compared to Paris, where we were always sitting next to someone on a cafe who lit up. Still, it was immeasurably better this time ’round in Paris, now that there’s no smoking indoors.

We sauntered back to the hotel, brimming with wine, infatuated with our new vacation home. Paris, je t’aime.

France: day 7 & 8

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DAY 7

So, here we were in Champagne. What to do first? First order of business was to have a look around the manoir where we were staying, to see how it looked in the daylight.

Okay, so that’s pretty nice then. That established, we set out. We had it on good authority that the nearby town of Hautvillers was nice, so we aimed for that. And nice it was. The town was very pretty, and very well kept-up. We strolled around, checked out some antiques, visited the little eglise which contained Dom Perignon’s tomb, took pictures of the surrounding countryside and sampled champagne at JM Gobillard & Fils. We ended up buying a bottle there as well.

We left there and drove toward Epernay, the central town in the area. We drove down the Avenue de Champagne where all the big champagne houses were headquartered, then drove half an hour or so to Chalons-en-Champagne. We had a middling lunch at a brasserie on Place de la Revolution, then drove back to Epernay. We booked in to a tour at the largest of the champagne houses, Moet & Chandon.

I wasn’t expecting much from the tour: a few token bits of info and a glass of bubbly and we’d be on our way. But I was pleasantly surprised. Except for a cheesy video, the tour was quite good. They took us down into the caves, explained some the terminology (I now know the difference between grand cru, premier cru and classic cru), showed us the vast expanses of bottles (there are over 100 million down there right now, some of which had been aging for decades), and so on. Very interesting and impressive. And they gave us a good glass at the end. Apart from the Dutch flying douchebag squadron which accompanied us on the tour, I was quite happy with it.

Tour finished, we returned to the manoir for a bit of rest (except my brother, who ran nine miles, silly boy) before going to the nearby Auberge des Moissons for dinner. It was an odd place…it seemed a bit of a tourist trap, and yet the food was pretty good. It was a bit more gastronomique than we’d been on the trip to that point, and I wasn’t sure what I was ordering 100% of the time, but my starter wasn’t bad and my red snapper was quite good. The cheese course was more than I needed, and my chocolate soup was just okay.

Highlights of the evening were around the table: my brother’s starter was bacon, foie gras, walnuts and tomatoes floating in a ‘broth’ of melted cheese diluted with cream. Nellie, on the other hand, got the truffles-and-champagne menu. All 11 elements of her 4 courses included truffles in some way, with varying success. Steak, potatoes and ice cream worked well; mousse and creme brulee most certainly did not. Still, for Nellie to *not* get a truffle-and-champagne menu would be like a koala turning down eucalyptus. We closed the place down, more or less, and drove home half-asleep.

DAY 8

Well-rested, we downed our breakfasts and set out to see more of Champagne. We took another branch of the champagne route, got some more great shots of the surrounding hills from the town of Champillon, and heard a rabbit get shot just near us. 😦

We ended up returning to Hautvillers and visiting the previous day’s producers so we could buy more of a particular bottle. We also did a tasting at another producer nearby. The champagne was so-so but the views…magnifique!

We set out to see more producers along the route, but about the time we hit the road they all closed up for the mid-day break. We drove around looking for another tasting venue without much success, though we did accidentally drive up to a spectacularly posh estate. We considered knocking on the door and asking to taste their demi-sec, but then thought better of it. We drove back down across the Marne to Damery and stopped for lunch at…well, at just about the only place we could find that was open. It was busy (good sign), open (a great sign!) and looked half decent, so we stopped. We thought we’d be turned away for lack of reservation, but with some wheedling they fit us in.

We had a beer and ordered some champagne, but after a while suddenly realized we’d been sitting there a long time without any food. Turns out they’d lost our order. There was a biker convention (61 people on motorcycles) which seemed to throw the kitchen into some disarray. They apologized and brought our courses quickly after that. Still, time was getting tight for my brother to get to Calais on time for his ferry crossing back to England.

Too bad we felt rushed toward the end, as the food was quite good. A big piece of ham from Reims in a puff pastry for our starters, wolf fish or beef or duck stew for mains, delicious chocolate dessert for most (or pineapple carpaccio for my brother) and, as I said, champagne from the very town we were sitting in. All excellent, and in a lovely setting (looking out at the little town straddling the Marne), but time was tight so we downed our coffees and took off.

We were dropped off at the manoir and said our goodbyes. As my brother prepares to move to Australia it’ll likely be some time before we see him again. But what a send-off it was; two great days of laughing and chatting and drinking great champagne in a part of the world that really does beggar the imagination.

Realizing that we didn’t feel at all like going out for dinner again tonight, we dashed back into town to find a store that was still open. We managed to locate a boulangerie just outside of Epernay and picked up enough to snack on in the evening when we got peckish. All that was left to do in Champagne was pack up, relax and get ready to start part two of the vacation: Paris.

France: day 5 & 6

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DAY 5

Mylene’s breakfast spread was a bit more elaborate than the others, and the dogs joined us as we ate, which I loved. We said our goodbyes and got on the road early. Today, we decided, the toll roads would be worth it. We had a long way to go. We had no plans other than to drive to Arras by dinner time, and possibly to stop somwehere in Rouen for lunch. We made such good time on the autoroute that we decided not to stop for lunch, but to punch straight through, stopping only for a bathroom break and some road snacks.

We hit the outskirts of Arras before 2pm, so we decided to go visit the Vimy Memorial right away rather than drive out the next morning. A quick adjustment to Carmen and she had us there, along with a few Canadians and a boatload of kids on school visits. Note to self: stick to visiting things early or late in the day when there are no screaming tweens.

The memorial was absolutely breathtaking, and the ground around it gave a hint of why that monument was there: what normally would have been rolling hills for the sheep to graze on was, even nine decades on, blistered with holes and craters from artillery. However, it should be noted that the sheep were still grazing there, which was somehow pleasing. The ground at the nearby replicas of the trenches was even more decimated, especially the three huge shell craters. Also, the woods around the site are still off-limits, as there’s a danger of stepping on unexploded artillery shells. Anyway, we spent quite a bit of time inspecting the memorial and the trenches. On the base of the memorial names were engraved of the Canadian soldiers who died in France and didn’t have proper burials, including one B.M. Dickinson. Not someone from my immediate family, but there are only so many Dickinsons in Canada.

Swinging back to Arras was easy enough, but finding our hotel was quite a pain. There’s no sign or indication on the outside, nothing that could be seen from a car to suggest that it was our hotel, so we drove around looking for parking. None was found, so we parked far away, then tried again, then parked again, then finally found it on foot. Then it was the ordeal of pulling the car up on the curb, lugging all the bags in, driving down the hill to find more parking, and walking back to the hotel. There are advantages to staying in a downtown hotel, but convenient parking is not one of them. The hotel was lovely, though, less like a B&B and more like what we pictured a French hotel to be. Carrying all the heavy bags up two flights of stairs seemed worth it when I could eat a still-hot pain au chocolate sitting in the window above a busy street & plaza.

That night we walked around Arras a bit, around the two main squares which had been destroyed in WWI but rebuilt later. We had dinner at a fancy brasserie on one of the squares, La Clef des Sens, which turned out pretty good. Nellie loved her meal. Mine was…interesting. I ordered a local specialty, which I learned the next morning had been tripe sausage. So, you know, that happened. Also, my chocolate mousse was maybe the richest thing I’ve ever eaten. I had to order a coffee just so the overwhelming sweetness left my mouth. Thus began my passionate week-long affair with coffee. And thus ended our evening.

DAY 6

We didn’t realize until we were in Arras how close we were to another (now-)Canadian memorial site: Beaumont-Hamel. Because we’d freed up our morning by visiting Vimy the day before, we decided to sleep in and then take the slightly scenic route to Reims, passing Beaumont-Hamel. It was almost as moving as Vimy, and still had the feel of a battlefield…scarred ground, trenches, barren plain and even a replica of the danger tree. It was also the first time I realized how compact these battlefields were, and how close the trenches were.

As we drove along the road south from Arras, the Somme valley was a steady sequence of memorials and military graveyards. We stopped at one large one containing many British and Australian markers, but also some Canadian. Many bore no name or nationality, but simply read ‘A soldier of the great war, known to God’.

The rest of our drive to Reims was uneventful. We parked, walked down the Place D’Erlon to have some lunch (mussels and beer!) at Le Grand Café and enjoyed the sunshine. We tried visiting Taittinger but the caveau tours were finished for the day, so we retreated to the cathedral.

Reims Cathedral, where French kings were crowned until the early 19th century, is enormous and really quite beautiful inside. We got some good shots, especially when we both spotted the sunlight streaming into the apse. I should point out that I don’t actually know whether we were standing in the apse, I just live the word apse.

We picked up supplies and left Reims, driving into the Champagne countryside. We arrived at our next lodging — Manoir de Montflambert — amidst the rolling hills covered in vines and settled in our room. It was nice to actually unpack for once…we’d been doing nothing but one-night stops, so being able to hang things and stretch out (we had a suite) felt like luxury. Oh yeah, and the mini-fridge contained five bottles of champagne when we arrived. My brother arrived several hours later after driving from London, and we sat up for a while eating, drinking and entering the usual silly zone we hit when we’re together. We all crashed at the same time, looking forward to the day we had planned.