Reims, France September 19

Dear Friends and Family,

For our first day in France, we ventured out of Paris to Reims. Our first order of business was to find a pastry shop. After we quickly found one, we got a baguette and a few chocolate croissants. We ate our croissants in front of one of three cathedrals in Reims. The cathedral was amazing mostly because we got to walk around the top of the cathedral. Thus, we were able to get a 360 view of Reims. We also got to walk though the top of the inside of the cathedral, which was cool because we got to see the inner supports of the cathedral (see picture). After spending quite a while in the cathedral, we left to go to another cathedral. However, on the way, we stopped at a grocery store and bought food for our lunch, which we ate in front of the other cathedral.

After visiting this cathedral, we toured the champagne cellar of taittinger family, a family famous for their wine. However, we had to wait a while before the tour and Eva and I had lots of fun catching up and taking ridiculous pictures (we discovered the function on my camera where you can switch colors). The tour was lots of fun. I had no idea how champagne was produced and now I know. Apparently there are two fermentations and during one of them, the bottles need to be turned slightly frequently. However, since there is some law in this region (I'm not exactly sure what region I'm talking about) that states that everything needs to be done by hand. Including turning the bottles. Which is ridiculous since there are thousands upon thousands of bottles each year. At the end of the tour we tasted some champagne (it was tasty).

We then headed for the train, picking up a baguette on the way (we really liked baguettes, which was a wonderful thing since we were in France). Unfortunately, French trains still hated us and for some reason that is still unclear, everyone on the train had to transfer to another train. Luckily we were still able to make it back to France, where we headed to the Watsons apartment and as it was late, slept.

Love,
Rosalie.