> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://vaughan.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Bubbles bubbles and Seafood Troubles - URL: https://vaughan.ai/blog/bubbles-bubbles-and-seafood-troubles/ - Published: 2001-07-15T22:01:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-07T23:19:20.000Z - Author: Vaughan Fergusson - Tags: France, #medium-import Reims is located east of Paris some 100 kms I think, and it is the heart of the France champagne region. So I don’t really need to elaborate on the reasons we wanted to visit. Good friends of ours, Jane and David, had a free ferry ticket to Calais and Mel and I had some free accommodation at a hotel in Reims so together we united and had a really cheap long weekend away. All we had to pay for was the rental car from Calais to Reims oh and of course food and drink. So this is how our journey began. We had the ferry booking for early on Friday so we footed it to Charing Cross station to catch our train down to Dover where we were to catch the ferry. The train left at 7am so we met up at a respectable 6:20 to head for the station. We arrived at Charing Cross to see the arse of our train racing down the platform away from us. Hmmm so we missed the first train. Next train in 30 minutes, which gives us 30 minutes also in Dover to get from the station to the Ferry Terminal. Can be done! The train ride was a nice run, not too busy so we ready newspapers and watched the increasingly familiar landscape roll on by our side. We pulled into to Dover and bolted out of the station to the only cab waiting outside, instructed the driver to make light speed to the terminal and we were off screeching around roundabouts and up the to terminals front door. Doing good, still 15 minutes to spare. As we were walking through the terminal our ferry departure was being announced on the PA. Well we thought it was as you can never actually understand the language they speak on PA’s. Up to the gate and handed our tickets over and phew, we were through, next onto the courtesy bus to the Ferry, first stop security to be zapped by x-rays. They didn’t seem to be taking much notice at the security point so I don’t know why they bother. I walked though the metal detector and lit it up like a Christmas tree but no one stopped me. They were all too concerned with the jammed x-ray machine that had swallowed up someone’s luggage. So I pulled out my machine gun and shot them all. Well I could have! Anyway we were on the boat eventually and it quickly dawned on us that it was the first week of school holidays, so screaming kids abound running up and down the boat. Unfortunately none of then fell overboard. At Calais we left the boat to search for our rental car, with Hertz. Of course on a Friday there was no one at the desk so we had to use the courtesy phone to arrange our car. After 10 minutes arguing with Hertz about the whereabouts of our car I pulled out my reference number to find we had actually booked it with Avis. Of course I didn’t tell the Hertz people that. Avis gave us our car and we were off. 3 or so hours drive to Reims. They have a good motorway system in France that is tolled so the roads are not ever that busy. We cruised at a respectable speed of 130km per hour (hey that’s the speed limit) in a straight line to Riems with the occasional burst to 180km just to see if the rental could handle it. Now we don’t condone driving fast on any roads (except perhaps the autobahn) but these roads were that good you could easily creep up above the speed limit without really knowing, really. We made it into Reims without a map and no idea where our hotel was. We knew it was by the river somewhere. We drove around and around, made a few illegal left hand turns that we didn’t realise were illegal until the next when we actually noticed the road signs, and eventually found the hotel. Without further ado we were out to find our first bottle of champagne to celebrate making it to Reims and we popped the cork and enjoyed one of the many things the French do so well. Not shortly after we had said cheers a wing of fighter jets buzzed our hotel, literally right over the top and you could read the French part numbers beneath. We thought a jumbo jet was parking itself in the hotel lobby. The weekend we had chosen to visit France was Bastille Day, What better reason to drink champagne! We wandered around central Reims that night and called into a nice French restaurant for more champers and great food. Day two, a day to explore the vineyards. There must be a whole months worth of Champagne trails around Reims so we didn’t really know where to start. We popped into the friendly information centre and found a very handy map of the area with all the trails clearly marked. We picked a good trail that covered some of the better known brands and headed south to Epernay. The weather wasn’t the best but we weren’t going to let a little rain spoil our day. We visited the monastery where Dom Perignon helped to discover the process that made champagne so bubbly. We popped into a couple of champagne houses to sample some of their wares and then moved on to the next. The day was pretty much just that. Sampling sampling and some more sampling. We popped into Moet Chandon and decided to take the tour around the cellars just so we could walk off some of the champagne. Apparently beneath the city of Epernay there is nothing but tunnels and cellars, so many in fact that they can’t dig anymore. All the cellars of the champagne houses are all linked so you can literally walk from one end of the city to the other, underground. Heaven forbid there is ever an earthquake in Epernay. The city would disappear under the ground, and all that champagne wasted! There were miles and miles of tunnels, filled with bottles. Millions and millions of bottles. Fascinating. The process of making champagne is quite complex also and I won’t attempt to explain because I don’t exactly every aspect of what is done. Simplistically the grapes are grown on the hills, then they are picked and squished, that bits fairly obvious really. Then they stick it all into bottles and let them site for a couple of years underground in limestone caves that keep the temperature and humidity constant. Then they stick all the bottles upside down to get all the sediment into the neck of the bottles. Traditionally they had a team of turners who’s jobs were to walk around racks of bottles and gradually increment the angle of the bottle and give them quarter turns at certain intervals. Now a days it’s all automated by machines. Then they remove the sediment basically by giving the bottle a bit of a shake and popping the cork. Expelling the sediment. Again these days its modernised and they actually freeze the neck of the bottle and the frozen sediment is pushed out then they cork it again. Interesting huh? Finally the put some sugar and secret stuff in the bottles and let them sit for a while longer and tadaa. You get champagne. It actually far more complicated than that and like I said I won’t even attempt to explain it, but you get the idea. Now time to sample the finished product. Yum yum. Cheers! We popped into a few more wineries and as the sun went down we headed back to our hotel with a small collection of champagne bottles. We popped another couple of bottles in our hotel rooms and headed out for some more great French food. We wandered into the centre square of Reims and found a respectable looking restaurant where we could site outside and enjoy a summer’s night. We ordered some food and some drinks, deciding we have had enough champagne to drink for one lifetime David and I settled on a beer each. We picked the strangest looking beer on the menu and ordered that, the waiter served our drinks with a “Boom Boom”. We thought it was a little strange until we read the bottle and found that the beer was 11% in content. Hmmm. Just what we needed. Our meals came out shortly afterward to Mel’s horror. As the waiter approached a look of fear slowly developed on Mel’s face. She had ordered something she recognised as salmon from the menu. But as the waiter approached she noticed there was something with legs and a head sitting on top of her plate. Now Mel is not the best with things with heads and eyes and smiling faces and in this case she was not coping with it at all, she was up from the table and was making an attempt for the door. The waiter looked extremely confused, as did the other 3 waiters who very quickly came to our table to find out why this strange English girl was screaming and climbing over the furniture. We all looked down at Mel’s plate and as if we all realised at the very same second what the problem was, with precise coordination I had the offending seafood off her plate and lobbed it into a breadbasket the waiter had produced from another table, the basket was backhanded to another waiter who disappeared into the kitchen, all in the space of 2 seconds. Mel was coaxed down from the light fittings and we continued our meal as if nothing had happened. We happily tipped the waiter and stumbled back to our hotel where we were treated to a fireworks display celebrating Bastille Day. The last day in Reims we had a buffet breakfast at the hotel. The great things about buffets are the amount of free food they dish out. Cheese, crackers, breads, jams, cakes. So we took to breakfast our day bags and discreetly filled them full of supplies for our picnic lunch later that day. We checked out and took in a couple of the Reims sights. Notre Dame, which strangely I had seen not two months earlier in Paris. Somehow they moved it to Reims without the Parisians noticing. We popped around to the MUMM winery to have a quick look around but decided against doing another tour as there are so many tunnels one can see. And at that decided to call it a day, or rather a weekend. We made it back to Calais and were shortly on our way back across the channel to Dover and home. Cheers France, we really loved the champagne. We decided we will go back again as you really need longer than a weekend to visit the region. A week would be about right considering the two days you lose in travel. We would recommend staying out of the cities, as you really want to be where the wine is so next time we would look for a nice country hotel or B’n’B. A car is definitely a must as is a designated driver. But as you go around the wineries you will pick up several bottles in the course of a day, which you will quite easily polish off in the evening. And the great thing about champagne is the after affects the next day and hardly noticeable. This was our last London based trip away so we no longer have to endure that damn ferry across to and from Calais. Not that there is anything wrong with it but the change in scenery as we venture off into Europe will be greatly welcomed. Our first port of call will be Turkey and after that we are not too sure. But as always I will let you know. V.