After we toured Taittinger, we visited Piper Heidsieck and Maxim’s. Our tour at Piper was sort of like the rides at Disneyland, where you are in a car on a track, and you visit various tableau, with commentary as you go. Except ours was unintentionally funny, when the sound went out on the car we were in. We didn’t get the commentary, just the visuals and sound effects which, without a context, were mostly baffling.
Our mild disappointment quickly turned to pleasure, when we arrived at the end, and they refunded our money, but still let us do our tastings, three glasses of champagne, two of which were quite good. The folks at Piper were unfailingly cheerful, and dressed smartly in red and black, the Piper colors. We ended up spending quite a bit of time in the gift shop, which included a very rare bottle of champagne in a Fabergé case, but ended up buying only a few small items.
As it was getting on in the afternoon, we rushed to Maxim’s, to find that we’d missed the day’s last tour. Once again, disappointment was averted; we were able to do just the tastings (at the same price). This was actually nice, because we’d just done two tours (and four glasses of champagne each), and didn’t feel up to a third. The tasting, we could handle.
And then it was time to go back to our hotel, and dinner.