alright, we're back! Let's start with Paris/Champagne...

I won't waste time going through the litany of reasons why I've been away from the blog so long...let's just get to the good stuff :-)

(Remember, you can click on all the pictures to view the full-size image)

Tyler and I recently celebrated our 5-year anniversary by going on a weekend getaway to Paris & Champagne.  Tyler get's full credit for this trip - he was the one who found the inexpensive airfare, booked the tour of Champagne, and planned all our activities in Paris.  I am such a lucky woman :-)

Our first day we took the train from Paris to Champagne and did a private tour around 3 different vineyards.  First, I must say I was blown away (pun intended) by how fast the trains went!  Shortly after we disembarked, another train went by and I guess I just didn't realize how fast we'd been going until I got some perspective standing there on the platform.  Anyway, our tour guide was awesome and very knowledgeable.  Chris was a Brit who worked in the defense industry before going to Champagne on holiday and deciding to move there.  He and his fiancee now run the tour company together.

It...was...gorgeous!  I thought Napa and Sonoma were beautiful, but the Champagne region is SO much more.  It is very quaint and charming and there weren't huge estates, just rows and rows of vines and scattered little villages.  The first champagne house we went to was Nicolas Maillart in Ecueil.  His family has been making champagne in the area since the 1700s and his father turned over the operation of the business to Nicolas when he was just 26 years old!  Harvest took place early this year and we got to walk around and watch what they were doing with all the grapes and were the only ones there touring their facility.  Their grapes are all from Grand Cru and Premiere Cru regions.  Cru essentially means village; there are only 17 Grand Cru regions and slightly more Premiere Cru regions and the grapes at Grand Cru are supposed to be better than Premiere Cru which are better than just Crus.  To put this into perspective, Chris told us there are about 381,000 tennis court size plots in the Champagne region and only about 9% are Grand Cru.  It's all regulated by a government organization to control the quality of the products and there are a LOT of rules...how long they have to age in bottles, how much can be used in the "first press," they have random inspections and test bottles at random - we learned quite a bit.

Anyway, back to Maillart.  We got to meet Nicolas briefly, but he was quite busy as they were working with all the grapes they'd just harvested.  Chris took us around the entire facility - aging tanks, oak barrels, riddling racks, and champagne aging in the bottle.  Even for a relatively small champagne house it was amazing to see just how much stuff they had at their facility.  Non-vintage champagnes have to age at least 15 months in the bottle and vintages have to age at least 3 years, but a lot of vineyards will let them age longer so they need quite a bit of space to store all of those bottles for years before they can be sold.  After the tour we got to try several different bottles and they were all fabulous and really quite different.  It was really intriguing to see just how different each champagne tasted and we definitely favored some over others.  We ended up leaving with two different bottles - one from the first vintage Nicholas created after taking charge of the family business, from 2003.

Our next stop was lunch at a 1-star Michelin restaurant in Montchenot called Le Grand Cerf.  The ambience was lovely - huge windows with an outdoor patio and the best view of the countryside.  I will not bore you with the details, but this was probably the most amazing food I've ever had in my life and it was all paired with more champagne and red wine (which was really funny to drink after all the champagne we'd had).

the cave with over 116, 000 bottles
of champagne in it - 38 rows as tall
as Tyler!

After our sumptuous lunch we made our way to Moet & Chandon for a tour of their cellars.  The first thing we learned was that they have three levels of underground caves that take up 28km!  It was mind-blowing to walk through them because it was like a whole other world existed underneath and around every corner was another hall of caves filled with bottle after bottle of Moet & Chandon and Dom Perignon champagne.  One cave that we saw had over 116,000 bottles in it - 38 rows stacked end to end on top of each other, as tall as Ty!  Our tour ended with a Dom Perignon tasting on this quiet little patio at the back of their facility.  The experience was lovely, but we both admitted that we had more fun visiting the smaller champagne house without all the merchandising and crowds that were out in the smaller villages nestled amongst the vines.

Our last stop was Ernest Remy in Mailly.  Their champagne is made from 100% Grand Cru Pinot Noir grapes and they only produce about 25,000 bottles a year (compared to a larger house like Moet & Chandon that produces around 30,000,000 bottles a year; Nicolas Maillart produces about 100,000 per year).  We literally had the whole place to ourselves.  Chris let us in and showed us their whole process, from start to finish - finishing with the best part of course, the tasting ;-) I'll admit though, one of most amazing places was their barrel room.  The smell of the oak and the wine was literally intoxicating (yes, pun intended again); Chris said that although it smells wonderful at first, it can be quite overpowering if you stay in there too long.  We had more amazing champagne and walked out with 3 more bottles.

Oh, and the best part was that as delicious as all the champagne was, the cost of the bottles at the smaller vineyards was only around 16 to 20 euros a bottle, versus 100+ for a lot of bottles at Moet & Chandon, so it was a really great deal for some wonderful champagne.  When our tour came to an end, we hopped on the train back to Paris, ate some food at the hotel because let's face it, nothing was going to compare to the lunch we'd had earlier, and had a great night's sleep.

on the train to Versailles

We weren't sure what the weather was going to be like the next day because the reports were mixed, so we decided if it was nice we'd go to Versailles and if it wasn't we would go to the Musee D'Orsay (since it was the first Sunday of the month and all the museums have free entry that day).  Lucky for us the weather couldn't have been any nicer so we took the metro all the way to Versailles and spent the whole day their.  I could not believe how enormous it was!  Not just the palace, but all the gardens plus the Grand Trianon, Petit Trianon and the hamlet.  Despite spending the whole day there we did not have enough time to visit the hamlet or tour all of the Queen's gardens!  But what we saw was simply stunning and it was shocking to think of what it was like for just one family to live in such opulence.  The level of detail was astonishing and the Hall of Mirrors was quite impressive; I was very glad that the weather turned out to be so nice and that we were able to spend all day there.

the gate and a view of the palace through the gate

the chapel from the lower level and upper level

amazing murals on the ceiling and artwork on the walls 

statue of Louis XIV, another ceiling, and embellishments on the doors

 

 

in the Hall of Mirrors

details on the ceilings of the King's Chambers

The King's bed, the Queen's bed, and where they would have eaten

more of the gardens, another ceiling mural, and a really detailed ceiling I just loved

out in the gardens

the fountains finally all fired up

me by another fountain and Ty by the Grand Canal

lovely flowers behind the Grand Trianon

view from inside the Grand Trianon and more flowers

gardens of the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon

The last thing I wanted to do before calling it a day was to see the Louvre.  We knew the museum would be closed after spending all day in Versailles, but I at least wanted to see it before leaving Paris.  (Tyler has actually been inside the museum itself before on a trip with his family when he was younger.)  I was SO excited to discover that even though the museum itself was closed, the entrance was still open and we could walk around inside the foyer and check out the glass pyramids.

However, I was super disappointed when we walked from the pyramid to the "chalice" (for all you DaVinci Code readers) to learn that, attached to the Louvre is an underground mall.  Yes, that's right, a mall.  Look in our pictures below; you can clearly see the Apple logo and the 2-story store in the background.  An image was shattered as we stood there surrounded by Apple, Esprit, a chocolatier, a tea house, etc.  But it was still lovely to see the two huge glass pyramids and I hope that we're able to go back sometime and that I'll actually get to enjoy some of the amazing art inside.

That evening we decided to keep things low key after everything the day before, so Tyler found this amazing Pho restaurant (yes, Vietnamese food in Paris) that we went to for dinner.  It was uber cheap, but the food is so good that there is always a 15 to 20 minute wait to be seated!  For a dinner that was only 7 euros each!  It was definitely worth the wait and a really fun and relaxing way to finish the weekend.

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I know I have to work backwards now, but I hope to fill you all in on all our guests that we've had here in Oslo, hiking Pulpit Rock just outside of Stavanger, our Baltic Capitals Cruise, and Tyler's 30th birthday filled with glacier hiking and whitewater rafting!  Stay tuned...