Day 14 - "dessous" means underneath I think...
After a great breakfast our congenial hosts offered us a tour of their cellar/cave of fossils. Was I not ready for what we were about to see next. This cave has been dug by Mr. Legrand by hand (power tools too) over the last 10 years. He is schooled in winemaking etc. but his hobby and passion are archeology/geology or some ology. The whole Champagne region was an inland sea 20 million years ago or so, maybe less, but anyways, the ground is very chalky from the crustaceans that once were on the seafloor. The cave which was started as a wine cellar but quickly uncovered tons of fossils in every shovelful. This was an amateur fossil hounds dream.
So we enter this cave and the whole ceiling is quickly all fossils. If yu carved it out a teaspoon at a time, you would have a fossil in every scoop. But they didn't look like fossils as we normally see them. They were so well preserved in the chalk, they looked like you had just picked them up at the beach. There were clam shells and snail shells principally, but some huge unicorn-horn looking snail shells as well.
This hand carved tunnel ran 200 meters into the side of the hill, under the road I believe at one point, with a few offshoots and rooms. Totally amazing undertaking. We spent almost 20 minutes to 30 minutes in the cave and both were totally blown away by what we saw. The intention is to make this a tourist attraction in concert with a champagne cellar tour that culminates in a beautiful tasting room, that has a remarkable fossil display upstairs. The fossils upstairs included a jawbone and teeth from a mastadon along with trilobites and many other amazing finds.
It was then that I really wished that I had more French to explain to him how "wow-ed" we were. We will definitely go back there in a few years and see how his project is progressing.
We had said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Belgian (never did get their names) before or tour, and we said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Legrand afterward. We hit the road to Reims and found the tourist info booth by 11:00am. A bunch of the Champagne houses had already finished their tours for the day by 11:00. Taiittinger (spelling?) was one that had tours until 12:00 so we set off on foot ALL HE WAY ACROSS REIMS hehe to the Cave des Taittenger. The last English language tour of the day had just left before us, so we quickly made our way through the caves to the group and resumed the tour with them.
I loved the caverns of Taitenenger which were built on the site of an old Abbye, and some of the cave were part of a chalk mine that was over 2000 years old. Truly awe inspiring stuff. Plus all the neat Champagne bottle evrywhere. And dusty, damp, dark, 8 deg celcius, wayy cool. The guide led us through the caverns and the amount of champagne there was staggering. In one "room" off of a gallerie (hallway) there was 96000 bottles…
Great tour, and I managed to get some cool photos, and it was wrapped up of course with a glass of their Brut Champagne. We met some people from Switzerland on our tour and a gal from Quebec who comes to France every 4 or 5 years and stays mostly in Paris with small trips thown in like this one. She marvelled at how much ground we ha e covered. We got spoiled speaking english for 20 minutes or so, and then were submerged back in to the Francophone world.
After grabbing some lunch and sitting across from the huge Notre Dame cathedral in Reims (it's vry similar to the Notre Dame in Paris) to eat. Which by the way is also the location of the cleanest public toilet in Europe so far. We then packed up and headed for Versaille.
Versaille is the the last tourist attraction we can squeeze into this trip. We are getting quite expert at following the roads, exits, autoroutes, peages etc.. We stopped at and "Aire de xxxxx de Nord" which is a Rest area with a gas station to gas up, have a coffee, and then dung out the car a little. We gave our 6 pack of 7-Up and 4 Belgian Trappist beers to a young Fernch couple travelling around France themselves who were stopped there as well.
We finally made it to Versaille and pciked pretty much the most convenient (and therefore most expensive) hotel we could find. The palace of Versaille is across the street from us! We had an agreeable meal after calling the kids (we haven't had a phone for a few days) then retired back to the room to relax. We're both a little beat, and I know now what a little homesickness feels like. We both really miss the kids and can't wait to be home. This trip was probably a few days too long, but we are taking away some terrific memories. I'm hopefully going to get the blog caught up tonight a little bit since we have wee fee (wifi) here.
Tomorrow is the Versaille palace stables, then the chateau tour etc after lunch. Finally we will get to the airport where we have a hotel room reserved for the night. Bon nuit.
So we enter this cave and the whole ceiling is quickly all fossils. If yu carved it out a teaspoon at a time, you would have a fossil in every scoop. But they didn't look like fossils as we normally see them. They were so well preserved in the chalk, they looked like you had just picked them up at the beach. There were clam shells and snail shells principally, but some huge unicorn-horn looking snail shells as well.
This hand carved tunnel ran 200 meters into the side of the hill, under the road I believe at one point, with a few offshoots and rooms. Totally amazing undertaking. We spent almost 20 minutes to 30 minutes in the cave and both were totally blown away by what we saw. The intention is to make this a tourist attraction in concert with a champagne cellar tour that culminates in a beautiful tasting room, that has a remarkable fossil display upstairs. The fossils upstairs included a jawbone and teeth from a mastadon along with trilobites and many other amazing finds.
It was then that I really wished that I had more French to explain to him how "wow-ed" we were. We will definitely go back there in a few years and see how his project is progressing.
We had said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Belgian (never did get their names) before or tour, and we said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Legrand afterward. We hit the road to Reims and found the tourist info booth by 11:00am. A bunch of the Champagne houses had already finished their tours for the day by 11:00. Taiittinger (spelling?) was one that had tours until 12:00 so we set off on foot ALL HE WAY ACROSS REIMS hehe to the Cave des Taittenger. The last English language tour of the day had just left before us, so we quickly made our way through the caves to the group and resumed the tour with them.
I loved the caverns of Taitenenger which were built on the site of an old Abbye, and some of the cave were part of a chalk mine that was over 2000 years old. Truly awe inspiring stuff. Plus all the neat Champagne bottle evrywhere. And dusty, damp, dark, 8 deg celcius, wayy cool. The guide led us through the caverns and the amount of champagne there was staggering. In one "room" off of a gallerie (hallway) there was 96000 bottles…
Great tour, and I managed to get some cool photos, and it was wrapped up of course with a glass of their Brut Champagne. We met some people from Switzerland on our tour and a gal from Quebec who comes to France every 4 or 5 years and stays mostly in Paris with small trips thown in like this one. She marvelled at how much ground we ha e covered. We got spoiled speaking english for 20 minutes or so, and then were submerged back in to the Francophone world.
After grabbing some lunch and sitting across from the huge Notre Dame cathedral in Reims (it's vry similar to the Notre Dame in Paris) to eat. Which by the way is also the location of the cleanest public toilet in Europe so far. We then packed up and headed for Versaille.
Versaille is the the last tourist attraction we can squeeze into this trip. We are getting quite expert at following the roads, exits, autoroutes, peages etc.. We stopped at and "Aire de xxxxx de Nord" which is a Rest area with a gas station to gas up, have a coffee, and then dung out the car a little. We gave our 6 pack of 7-Up and 4 Belgian Trappist beers to a young Fernch couple travelling around France themselves who were stopped there as well.
We finally made it to Versaille and pciked pretty much the most convenient (and therefore most expensive) hotel we could find. The palace of Versaille is across the street from us! We had an agreeable meal after calling the kids (we haven't had a phone for a few days) then retired back to the room to relax. We're both a little beat, and I know now what a little homesickness feels like. We both really miss the kids and can't wait to be home. This trip was probably a few days too long, but we are taking away some terrific memories. I'm hopefully going to get the blog caught up tonight a little bit since we have wee fee (wifi) here.
Tomorrow is the Versaille palace stables, then the chateau tour etc after lunch. Finally we will get to the airport where we have a hotel room reserved for the night. Bon nuit.
posted by Paul at 1:50 PM
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