Exeter, Reims and Toul

This will be sort of a long post, and maybe our last post for a week. Except for our hotels rooms, we haven't found any WiFi. (There seem to be a lot of "free wifi" signs, but it doesn't actually seem to work when we try it.)

Tomorrow we take off for the "biking" part of our trip and we don't expect to get WiFi on the Barge. At the B&B in Reims, where we spent the last two nights, Kathy could connect with her iPhone, but my computer wouldn't connect. She was able to do posts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Today, when we got into Toul, it looks like my computer is OK, but her iPhone is having some difficulty.

Exeter to Reims

As I mentioned earlier, our trip from Cornwall to Reims went very smoothly. We switched hotels so we would have easier access to the bus to the airport. We had a very nice English breakfast to remember, before moving to the world of the "continental breakfast."

Our flight to Paris was at 11:30, so we wanted to be at the airport at 9:30. We had no trouble catching the bus from the St. David's train station (just down the hill), and got the airport in plenty of time.  The airline, Flybe, uses a small turbo-prop for this route, which flies from Belfast to Exeter and then back to Belfast each day.

The flight to Paris is only an hour and a half (with a 1-hour time change en route.) After adjusting the time on our phones, we were in Paris.

And that's when all the fun started. After we retrieved our luggage and made it through border control, we followed the signs for the train station. I didn't see our train number on the board, so we asked at information. He looked at my ticket, and said, "Not from here."

After he said it, I remembered that when I bought the tickets, the times from the airport (CDG) didn't really work, so I had planned to take the subway to Paris, and pick up the train from there. Of course, that meant we had to get tickets for the RER and Metro, and because we didn't have any coins, we couldn't use the automated system.

We waited in line, got on the train, asked around and found the right Metro line, and pulled into the Paris l'Est train station 15 minutes late.

Back to the lines to buy all new tickets for Reims which got us to our hotel at 6:30 instead of 4:30 as we had originally planned. All the time, I kept kicking myself, because I simply forgot that we needed to change stations. If we had immediately headed for Paris, I think we would have made it OK. (Kathy's been really understanding, though.)

Even though we got in so late, we found the small, 2-bedroom guesthouse where we were staying (Guest House B&B ‘Les Telliers’) without any problem. We stayed in the "Angles" bedroom (http://telliers.fr/welcome/bedroom-angels/ for some pictures).

After unpacking we set out for a late (for us) dinner. Since we were in France, of course we had hamburgers. (Not at McDonalds, though; we haven't sunk that low.)

After dinner (around 10:30), we walked downtown to the Cathedral to see a light show where they illuminate the face of the church, showing it's state through the ages. It's very artistic and interesting. Here are a couple of the shots:

You can see the rest of the pictures by clicking the "France and Biking" link in the sidebar on the right where it says "Just the Pics".

After such and "exciting" day, we slept in a little, and got up at 8:00. The house outside our window was built in the 1600s.

Our room is beautiful, named after the "smiling angel" on the front of the Cathedral.

Downstairs, we had a delicious continental breakfast and spent some time talking with Renaud, who, along with his wife Veronique runs Les Telliers. He told us about the best places to eat and things to see.

He also spent about an hour helping me try to connect to their WiFi, to no avail. We took an older Windows XP netbook computer with us, and in the past we've had times where it just won't connect to a particular hot-spot.

One thing we wanted to do was go to an outdoor market and get some food for a picnic lunch. The downtown market wasn't open on Thursday, so we walked to a market in the suburbs, and got to see a little bit of non-touristic Reims.

We bought some apples, a little cheese, some ham, a few figs and a dozen apricots. On the way back in town, we stopped at a Monoprix and picked up some chips and soda. Then, we had a very fine picnic right next to the Roman arch at the Porte du Mars.

While we were out, we stopped by the train station to purchase a ticket to our next stop, Toul, where we'll pick up the barge on Saturday. The good news was, we got a senior discount, so the tickets were less than $50. The bad news? The train left at 6:19 AM. (I had thought we could leave at 8:00, but I misread the schedules.)

That out of the way, we decided to take in the Cathedral during the daytime, and explore downtown Reims. There are a lot of interesting buildings (at least for Californians) like the Opera Cinema. This isn't even the main Opera building.

Downtown there was a carousel right in front of one of the old churches. We tried to take a video to show our granddaughter Phoenix, but the light wasn't quite right.

To finish off the day, we headed over to the Cathedral to take a closer look. While the outside is impressive, the inside really takes your breath away; it's just so large. Here's Kathy in one of the side naves (I think. I mean, I know it's Kathy; I just don't know if that's a "nave").

Here's the main "rose" window with the sun shining through it.

Here are some of the other areas. I don't know their names, and didn't have the presence of mind to copy them down. I just liked the way that they looked.

About half way down there is a chapel with a statue of Joan of Arc. There is also another statue outside on a horse.

At the back, behind the altar, are the famous Marc Chagall windows.

Standing in front of them, you can look through the altar and see the rose window on the front of the Cathedral.

After we saw enough of the inside of the church, both of us were pretty tired. It was around 6:00 PM and we had to get up at 5:00 to catch our train. We headed outside, where I had my picture taken with Joan of Arc (to go along with my picture from Madrid with Sancho Panza and Don Quixote). 

Finally, we dragged ourselves down to the main pedestrian street and had a ordinaire and touristic pizza and chicken for dinner. I guess we're just not that sophisticated.

On to Toul

Our alarm went off at 5:00 and by scrambling we were out the door before 6:00. (Only later did we find that Kathy forgot her sandals in the room. Fortunately it looks like we'll get them mailed to the Dentes in Paris and be able to pick them up in Luxembourg.)

On the train, the young lady conductor told us that we didn't really need to change trains (like our original tickets specified) but we could stay on the train all the way to Toul. That was great news. Previously we had been looking at a 2 hour layover. Apparently the Toul area is popular with cyclists, because the cargo area was filled, with some bikes in the aisles.

That meant, though, that we got into town at 8:30. In the morning.

That turned out to be a blessing. We stopped at a pastry shop and got coffee and some food, and then found our hotel. Even though it was only 9:30, they let us drop off our luggage and we took off exploring.

When we came back, at noon, our room was ready. We got the WiFi keycode and started updating the blog and uploading pictures. 

We're heading out for the afternoon (it's 4:00 PM) and some dinner. If we have a chance, I'll post again tonight and tomorrow morning before we get on the barge. It's supposed to dock tonight with last week's passengers, coming down river instead of going up.

If I'm not able to post again, remember us in your prayers. After the trip we're looking forward to Sunday Morning service at Calvary Chapel of Luxembourg.