Wednesday, July 23: France, Montigny to Reims

Crossroads in a Champagne District Village

We realized that our box of champagne was missing a bottle, so we drove a half hour back to the vineyard through wonderful old villages precariously set on hillsides with the vineyards spread out down the hillsides to the valley below. Every village had champagne producers and places to s top for tastings, but we passed them all by since we had to drive...

You guessed it - this is NOT a one-way street.  Whoever is there first gets to go first!

We picked up our missing bottle and headed northeast towards the city of Reims. We stopped at a forest preserve and did a nice 2 mile walk through the woods to see some unusually formed trees with twisted trunks and branches that hang like umbrellas – sort of France's answer to our live oak trees. 

A baby "faux" tree

Twisted trunks and umbrella like foliage

We came across this small chapel (10x10) all by itself in the woods with a very pretty stained glass window in the back wall that you can see through the doorway

We then made a quick stop at a tiny museum in Reims where General Eisenhower had his headquarters and where the Germans tried to negotiate an end to the war. The allies would accept nothing but unconditional surrender and the papers were signed in the map room around 2 in the morning.

Photo of Surrender

The map room today, just as it was

More of the map room

It was getting late, so we opted to stay at close-by Aire, right in downtown Reims. It took a while to find the entrance to the small parking area behind a building that held about 10 Rvs. The narrow entrance driveway had a sharp turn and a low steel post jumped out and scraped down the side of the RV, tearing off the handle of the slide-out bay near the door, cracking the fiberglass in a few places along the rest of the bays and damaging the steel supports for the locks on the bays.

We pulled in one of the remaining spots and Jack got to work trying to fix the various damaged pieces. In the process, he cut his finger quite badly and I found the number of a taxi that could take us to the nearest clinic/hospital. We waited a bit longer and the bleeding finally slowed, we were able to clean it up, apply antibiotic cream and bandage it up. Although the cut was deep, it wasn't a separating gash, but more of a flap on the pad of his right index finger. It opened up a few more times, but finally stopped bleeding, so we decided to hold off going to the hospital.

Since Jack couldn't use his hand, he instructed me on how to finalize the repairs he figured out so that we could secure the bays and get flapping fiberglass tied down. Afterwards, we sat in the adjoining grassy area, had a glass of wine (OK, maybe a few glasses of well-deserved adult beverages), and had dinner.

What started out as a serene, bucolic day in the countryside ended with a some very stressful hours. It stayed very warm during the night and without electricity, we tossed and turned, reliving the day's aggravations, worried whether the fixes will last, but grateful that Jack seems okay and we can continue our trip.