Category: Rochelle

Our first real day in France began when the cleaning folks came into our room, because we forgot to put up the Do Not Disturb sign. After we shoo’ed them out, Rochelle muttered about them getting started pretty damn early “over here,” not realizing that it was way past her normal wake-up time of 7:00am. It was nearly noon!

When we realized we’d slept half our day away, we quickly got up, showered, dressed (me in the same clothes as yesterday, because Virgin Atlantic still hadn’t found my luggage), and fled the hotel in search of food and fun.

Getting into Reims was pretty easy, we just went a few more exits up the freeway from our hotel, and followed the signs to the cathedral. After driving around relatively aimlessly for 10 minutes, we spotted a parking space and stopped. Another 5 minutes to figure out how to use the parking “meter” (a box down the street which dispenses slips of paper with your expiration time on them — all instructions in French, of course), and we were loose.

So, the first thing we really did in France was visit the cathedral of Reims, which is a pretty impressive cathedral, as much so as the much more famous Notre Dame. However, churches get boring fast, and when we exited we spotted the Tourist Center, and popped in there.

We quickly got set up with a map to the big champagne houses in Reims, with notes on which ones require reservations and which ones you can just tour when you visit, as well as a detailed map of Reims with greater resolution (i.e., more street detail) than the one in our guidebook.

In spite of our very late start, we managed to visit that afternoon three of the champagne houses that don’t require reservations: Taittinger, Piper Heidsieck, and Maxim’s (which, if we understood correctly, actually private labels wines from the Comte de Noiron champagne house).

But that’s another post.

Our trip to France included some of the worst travel experiences either Rochelle or I have had. We didn’t have a non-stop flight, flying from SFO to London Heathrow, and then to Charles De Gaulle in a second plane. On the flight out, the airline lost three of our four checked bags. Yes, 75% of our luggage did not arrive in France when we did. Only Rochelle’s gear got there as expected.

One of the missing bags arrived on the next flight (from Heathrow to CDG), about an hour and a half later. That was the empty hard-sided suitcase we had brought so we could stuff it full of champagne to bring home.

We waited another hour and a half, for the next flight after that, but no more bags appeared. The airline said they couldn’t find them in the system, which meant they’d gotten lost when changing planes (as we very nearly did; our two flights were too close together, and we had to run through Heathrow, something we’ve vowed never to do again).

So we picked up our rental car and drove to Reims, two hours away, and checked into our hotel, sans all of my clothing, and both of our toiletries kits.

Now, the experienced traveler will no doubt tsk tsk, and suggest we were traveling too heavy, and not very smart, by not having at least our essentials as carry-ons. But we were ambitious in what we wanted to be able to bring back (we’ll get to that in another post), and our packing strategy made sense, at least at the start.

Still, after two more days, my bag had not arrived. After turning my shorts inside-out the second day, I was at a loss for what to do on the third. And the shirt I was wearing, for the third day, was starting to get rank. Finally my suitcase arrived, and I was able to change — but not before I broke down and bought new socks, underwear, and shirts.

But that’s not all! My bag took three days to show up, but the fourth never did. Which is astonishing, because it was an empty box. Well, not really empty. It was a very thick cardboard shipping box with styrofoam inserts molded to contain and protect a full case of champagne (I told you we were ambitious). These shipping packs are relatively easy to get in the US, but impossible to find in France — and god knows we tried. This made the lost item almost priceless. We literally were unable to replace it.

And we had to try. Because the airline told us that they had lost it, and since it was an “empty” box, it had no value (to them), so they wouldn’t even look for it. Indeed, even if they accidentally found it, because it was empty, they would just destroy it instead of trying to give it back to us!

You want to hear the most amazing, and appalling, part of the story?

We were flying Virgin Atlantic. Yes, that supposedly Nirvana in the sky, the airline everyone wants to emulate, Virgin Atlantic Airways totally fucked us on our luggage.

I’ll have quite a bit more to write about Virgin Atlantic; this is only the flight to France. But the summary is we’re never flying Virgin again.

Our trip in France lasted 16 days, and we obviously ate a lot of French food. Which was wonderful, but it’s time for a rest.

So today I ate Mexican food for the third day in a row. Mexican is one of the cuisines you have real difficulty finding at all in France. In fact, the closest we found was a TexMex restaurant. (We were too scared to eat there.)

So, since we got back, I’ve been eating a lot of Mexican food. For three days straight. Well, Sunday it was only margaritas (and margaritas only)…