Day Two – Getting Settled – May 21, 2011

Day Two – Getting Settled – May 21, 2011

Breakfast at Parva Domus is scheduled for the unsociable hours of 7am through 9am. This, in my opinion, is far too early and narrow of a window for a properly relaxing holiday. On the other hand, it did force us up and out of bed at a reasonable hour and gave us an earlier start to the day than we probably would have otherwise had.

Breakfast itself was typical for a French B&B – bread, croissants, coffee, orange juice, a selection of cheeses, ham, yoghurt and other “continental breakfast” favourites. Jay and Lauren, who we’d met the previous night, were just finishing up when we went down and looking much the worse for wear. While champagne-based hangovers I find are very difficult to achieve, when one does manage to bring one on, it’s impressive. Lauren did not look healthy.

We didn’t have a particularly ambitious itinerary for the day – the plan was to visit the market, visit Moet & Chandon, then relax with our books and a bottle or two of champagne on the balcony at the B&B. We managed to achieve all of these goals, with more thrown in for good measure.

It took us ages to find the market. Our assumption was that Epernay is a fairly small town, and it wouldn’t be difficult to find. This turned out to not be the case, but mostly because we weren’t really thinking clearly. We’d found the big market hall the previous day on our wanders around the town, but when we put two and two together we only came up with three and didn’t immediately connect that that’s where the Saturday morning market would be.

Despite this, we enjoyed our saunter around the centre of town looking for the market, and made it that much more of an accomplishment when we finally found it (feeling rather sheepish, especially as I’d made Jamie go into two separate stores to ask where the market was).

It was a typical French village market – loads of beautiful and fresh fruit and veg, flowers, all of the cheese you could possibly want, all of the usual meat and some very unusual meat products (two horse meat butchers, and at least one that seemed to focus purely on the bits that wouldn’t normally be eaten by sensible people – tripes, brains, tongue, head, ears, feet, tail, etc…). We spent about an hour wandering back and forth looking at all the selection before deciding to stock up on some beautiful strawberries and a bag of fresh cherries for our afternoon snack.

Having checked off the first of our list for the day, we deeply felt the need for coffee (at least I did). We stopped in at our little bar on the main roundabout (Le Progres – I think there is one in every town by law), where I had a grand café crème and Jamie went for a lemonade, which I think turned out to be sprite or similar. It’s amazing how much time we can spend sitting and drinking various beverages whilst on holiday, be if coffee, wine, or champagne.

A quick stop in at the B&B to put on some proper shoes and then we were off to the grand house of Moet & Chandon for our tour and tasting. Avenue de Champagne is filled with all the major champagne houses, however most of them are by appointment only, with Moet one of the only ones that does guided tours for the plebs. The waiting room was well stocked with tourists, and our 11:30 tour group was of about 15 people.

The tour wasn’t a typical winery tour, of which we’ve taken far too many. There was little discussion of the grapes, the pressing or the fermentation. It focussed more on the importance of the cellars (there are 28 kilometres of cellars under Moet for example, on 3 levels – freaking HUGE) and the care that it taken with the aging and de-sedimenting of the wine.

At the tasting after the tour, a group of women were taking photos of each other in the tasting room. Jamie offered to take a group photo of them, and we all got to talking. First, we discovered that we’re all from Vancouver. Then we all found that we’d worked for the same large company at the same time. Finally, it turned out that they’d all worked either with or for my dad, who also worked at the same company. Talk about a small world. We had the tour guide (with the very non-french name Barbara) take a group photo of us all so that they could email it to my dad. Very bizarre.

All the walking in cellars and drinking of wine had worked up an appetite in us, so we decided to find some lunch, then walk out of town and take some photos of one of the vineyards. We made it as far as Le Chapon Fin on the far side of town and had what we’d felt would be a healthy and light lunch – salad for both of us. Of course, this being France, Jamie’s salad consisted of a few leaves, baked goats cheese on croutons, lardons, fried potatoes, poached eggs, and a few slices of tomato. Mine, on the other hand, was very health-conscious – the same few salad leaves, half an avocado, a quarter of a fresh pineapple, 6 grilled prawn, and some marie-rose sauce for good measure. I love France.

After lunch we decided that the walk into the vineyards was a bit ambitious, especially as we planned a day of driving and exploring the vineyards for tomorrow. We’d made it as far as the train station (which was more or less across the road) before deciding this, and turned back into the centre of town. We’d just had lunch, and it was too early to start drinking, so we went for a bit of a walk about town.

Somewhat surprisingly for a Saturday afternoon, there weren’t that many people about. It seems that Epernay is a very quiet little town most of the time, for all that it’s the centre of champagne in the world. We stopped in at two places and made reservations for dinner for both tonight and tomorrow, then walked back to the B&B for our afternoon of strawberries and champagne.

It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon indeed – we sat for a few hours and read, chatted, sipped chilled champers and nibbled on fresh strawberries. The only way it could have been any better was if we’d then had a nap, and as we are on vacation, we did just that. We woke up more relaxed than I thought was humanly possible, and considering the lack of activity for the day, a bit peckish.

We walked back into town and sat down for dinner. While we were a bit rushed by the waitress, dinner itself was reasonably good and quite well priced. I don’t know that I’d go back, or recommend that anyone go out of their way for it, it was decent and I definitely can’t complain.

After dinner we felt that a final nightcap was in order before we headed back to the B&B for bed. Le Progres was the obvious choice given the warm and cloud-free evening, as we could sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather.

It probably would have been better, in retrospect, if we’d been a bit more careful in reading the menu. We thought we were ordering a half bottle of champagne, given the price, and the bottle was in a separate section on the drinks menu. Had we looked closer, we would have realized that it was just a different producer of wine. The half bottle of red we got turned out to be quite tasty and a nice break from all the champagne if I’m honest. Plus, it came in a bag of ice water so was nice and cool and refreshing.

We sat and chatted and watched people having dinner and drinks for good hour or so before deciding to call it a night. A bit sunburned despite the sunscreen, but relaxed and happy – I’d call that a very good day indeed.