Said our goodbyes this
morning and we set off for Paris. I was pretty excited because we were supposed
to meet Melanie the next day.
We stopped at Reims, France along the way to visit beautiful Reims Cathedral. We pulled into the city and found a likely parking place. Didn't even think about having to pay. We just left the car, locked of course. We were hungry so the first task was to find a place to get something to eat. We stopped in a "pub" (again I'm sure they don't call them that in France) and ordered a cheese platter with some drinks. The cheese and the bread were excellent and it just happened the proprietor of the cheese shop was in the pub and told us all about the cheeses. It was a nice lunch.
We next asked for directions to the cathedral and the man from the cheese shop directed us down the street and it was just a 10 minute walk. Oh did I mention it was raining. We had left the umbrellas in the car and didn't go back to get them. So we walked to the cathedral in the rain. It was certainly worth the walk. To say it was impressive is an understatement. Very beautiful and no admission charge. I did donate 10€ but nothing was required. Mark had suggested that we stop here especially since we missed the cathedral in Cologne. I'm glad he made that suggestion.
We stopped at Reims, France along the way to visit beautiful Reims Cathedral. We pulled into the city and found a likely parking place. Didn't even think about having to pay. We just left the car, locked of course. We were hungry so the first task was to find a place to get something to eat. We stopped in a "pub" (again I'm sure they don't call them that in France) and ordered a cheese platter with some drinks. The cheese and the bread were excellent and it just happened the proprietor of the cheese shop was in the pub and told us all about the cheeses. It was a nice lunch.
We next asked for directions to the cathedral and the man from the cheese shop directed us down the street and it was just a 10 minute walk. Oh did I mention it was raining. We had left the umbrellas in the car and didn't go back to get them. So we walked to the cathedral in the rain. It was certainly worth the walk. To say it was impressive is an understatement. Very beautiful and no admission charge. I did donate 10€ but nothing was required. Mark had suggested that we stop here especially since we missed the cathedral in Cologne. I'm glad he made that suggestion.
The rest of the trip to Paris itself was
pretty uneventful. However after arriving we had to find our hotel. This turned
out to be most difficult. The initial directions I had copied off from Google
Maps were inaccurate because the information was inaccurate (my fault). We had
even flagged down a couple of taxi drivers in this area and asked them to lead
us to the hotel for their regular fare. None of them were interested. We did
finally stop at a McDonalds, they have Wi-Fi even in France.
Discovered the error and tried
to copy down the subsequent directions from the McDonald’s to the hotel. Once
again got to the new area but were hard pressed to find the hotel once again.
This time we flagged a taxi driver and he very graciously led us to the hotel.
He did not even charge us when I’m sure he could have had a paying fare. We
forced 10€ on him anyway with our undying gratitude.
This hotel ordeal actually
took about 5 hours including time out for dinner. You have no idea how tense
things were in the car. We were all ecstatic to get into our rooms and get some
much-needed rest.
The moral of this story
obviously is, if you are going to a big city in Europe that is unfamiliar be
sure to have a reliable GPS. Next time we will have one.
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