Why can’t life be more like Paris traffic? When we arrived here I was scared to death to even think about driving here. Luckily we didn’t have to. In the city of paris there are very few driving lanes and it seems to be every car, truck, motorcycle, scooter, bike and person for themselves. This is very scary from the point of view of an american driver that has been taught to drive defensively.
After a couple days here I’ve noticed something interesting. The drivers here have an understanding. They realize they are all in this thing together. They give and take space and share the road because they all have places to go. No one is more important than the others.
There are about 11 million people in paris yet I have seen any road rage, obscene gestures and amazingly not a single fender bender. I’m sure there are but I haven’t seen any. Compared to 1 week in the small town of nampa where I see 1 of each of these things daily it seems. Traffic is part of life the people of Paris. These drivers have accepted traffic/life as is it comes and they respect the other drivers just because they are on the road/journey with them.
It this not a beautiful image of how life should be? We are all in this thing together, why not work together and help each other out. We can live a better life letting others in and slowing down for those around us than we ever could if we all go as fast as we want in any direction without concern for the person on our right and left. You may get some scratches along the way and sometimes a big truck will double park in front of you but be patient someone will slow up and let you get around.

That’s what I think anyway.

Today we got up early and had a exquisite breakfast again then got in a mini van type vehicle to tour the Champaign Valley. It was a 2 hour drive to the Reims where we stopped and looked at one of the oldest and most important Cathedrals in all of Europe. Notre Dame de Reims (the one in paris is Notre Dame de Paris) has over 2,500 statues and is absolutely beautiful. The church was mostly destroyed by the Germans during the war and has since been in a constant state of construction to try and restore it’s original splendor. The stained glass windows in the back of the cathedral were re-designed and created by Marc Chagall (famous abstract painter). Pictures are on flickr.

We then moved on to the Champaign Valley. There are 138,000,000 bottles of champaign produced every year in this valley and this valley alone. 70% by a few huge companies and the rest by 1000’s of small families. We visited a small and large winery on our tour.
This valley is the only place that “Champaign” can be produced. Some sparkling wine is made in California by the same process but since it is not from this valley it can not be called Champaign. Wine can not be produced in this valley either, they seem have very strict guidelines on where certain things can be made. There is a small amount of red wine that is produced to add to the champaign to make a rose champaign but the wine is not marketed by itself.

Dom Perignon was a monk in the small town where we visited the small winery, and he is credited with creating champaign. In this town there is an old church/monastary in which he was monk and he is buried at the front of the church. We stopped at this church and looked around it was kind of creepy. They had some relics there in boxes, these relics were the bones of some saint. It is odd to look into a box and see a human skull looking back at you. From this small town we then went to visit one of the largest producers of champaign in the valley. We took a tour of their cellars and learned all about the process. This is the company (Moet & Chandon) that makes “Dom Perignon” champaign and produces millions of bottles of champaign every year.

Champaign is a mixture of 2-3 types of grapes, pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonay. Mixed in different proportions each champaign house has a different taste. But unlike wine the traditional champaign from each house(company) is supposed to taste the same from year to year. Traditional champaign does not have a year on the label because it is not a vintage where as all wine is a vintage. Champaign receives a vintage only if it is an exceptionally good year for the grapes and they use better juice in the vintage champagnes than in the traditional champagnes. So you may only produce a vintage champagne every 5-10 years. “Dom Perignon” is always a vintage, so not produced every year and uses just pinot noir and chardonay grapes. It also ages in the cellars for 8-10 years. The traditional only ages for a total of 4 years before it is released. It was a very interesting day. I’m tired of typing and you’re tired of reading so if you have any questions ask them in the comments or when we get home and I’ll do my best to explain more.

Yesterday started with a fantastic breakfast. I don’t know if french toast originated in France but this place does it right. It is big and fluffy like yellow clouds that melt in your mouth. MMMMMMMM. We are staying in the “Hole du Louvre” and every american hotel I’ve ever been in could take some lessons from the Continental Breakfast they serve here. After breakfast we had 4 hours with a private driver and a really nice car and we did a driving tour of Paris. We saw most of the major monuments and famous places in side of Paris. We saw all of these little shops that we wanted to go shopping at later this week but now have no idea where they were. Everything here looks the same.

After we returned to the hotel we took a small nap (still can’t get used to the time difference) and then went to the Louvre to look around and have lunch. Wow, that place has a lot of stuff. It’s been a long time since I was in a museum that had that much stuff.

The Louvre used to be a home for French Kings, and has been converted into a museum. They have french sculptures, ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, Renaissance Paintings, Ancient Egyptian artifacts, a section is still decorated like Napoleon had it, ancient Mesopotamian artifacts and so on and so on. Most of this we could take pictures of except for the French Paintings. I don’t know why but they wouldn’t let us take pictures of the french paintings. I personally think that France views them as a national treasure and taking pictures of them would be like stealing them (they have weirder ideas). This didn’t seem to stop most people from taking photos and since there were no signs in english I didn’t know, so I too tried to take photos and I got yelled at in French. That was a very scary experience. The French language can be very scary when being hurled at you by an cranky old lady.

We walked around for hours on concrete, stone and marble floors and our feet and ankles were hurting us very much (this sentence resembles how the french phrase they’re english. I didn’t want to type it this way but I haven’t had a good english conversation in a couple days and have forgotten how to speak). Bridgett was hobbling pretty bad as we left and to make matters worse once we got to the hotel the elevator was out of service and we had to climb the stairs. OUCH!!! I took a lot of photos and uploaded several to flickr so go check them out.

Ok so to start from the beginning, we went out with Nathan and Sherri Walker on Sunday night and didn’t get to bed until about 2am Monday morning. We had to be at the airport at 6am so that made for a very short nights sleep. We boarded our plane in Boise and flew directly to Atlanta where we had a short lay over and boarded our plane for Paris.

I’ve never flown over an ocean before and was kind of freeked out by the idea of seeing nothing but water in any direction I looked. But it was really quite beautiful, there was a full moon and we could see forever. The plane was huge and everyone had their own little tv screen for playing games, watching movies, or tv. I watched 4 movies during the trip. This helped with the fact that the emergency exit rows we requested were switched for rows that had been made smaller to compensate for the restroom. I was so very cramped. I watched “Hot Fuzz”, “Disturbia”, “Land of Women”, and “Fantastic 4″. Good times.

After arriving in Paris we discovered that one of our bags didn’t make it on that flight so we had to wait for it to arrive on the next flight. Lucky for us our driver didn’t have anything else to do so waited for us. We ended up getting to our hotel about 3 hours later than expected.

We then set out to find the Louvre I tried to find it in reference to our hotel on google maps but google didn’t place our hotel in the right spot so we couldn’t tell where we were exactly. Then we tried finding the building that is right outside our window. We couldn’t seem to find it on the map where we thought it should have been either. We decided to just go look for the Louvre and see what happens. Come to find out the building right outside our hotel room window is…. The Louvre. Boy did we feel stupid. We will be spending a large portion of tomorrow there, at least that is the plan.

We wandered around for a while looking for dinner and finally decided on a small cafe in the park area by the Louvre. It was good. I took several photos already and the up on flickr so check them out.

I’m in Paris. Paris France not Paris Texas. We just got checked into our hotel and took showers. 10+ hours on a plane will make anyone greasy and gross. We haven’t slept in who knows how long now and so we be taking a nap. It is about 11am here but about 3am back in Idaho. I’ll be writing more about our travel day and uploading pictures of our hotel later.

I’m on vacation. Yeah, finally. I only wish I knew where I was going. My wife has planned this whole trip and I don’t have a clue where we will end up (she won’t tell me). We are currently at the airport and I know we are going to Atlanta first but I don’t know where from there. We’ve had a lot of stress with passports and travel arrangements, well not me but more her because I don’t know where we are going, but now we are on our way.It is like riding up to the top of a roller coaster with all the anticipation of the first huge drop and the rush of adrenaline. I will be blogging during most of the trip and sharing my vacation with you. Hopefully you will enjoy what I share with you.

You should be able to post pictures both here on the blog and on my flickr account here.