On Sunday morning, we realized that we had reserved our rental car the wrong day. Thankfully, we have been trying to book everything with free cancellation (Covid has at least taught us that!) and now just needed to book a new car rental. (We’ll get to that shortly…)

We encountered another issue when trying to get assistance at the train station to help get Jon on board. The workers were not helpful, and one of them was quite rude. Andy and Yvonne were able to help get Jon into the train (we were not going to miss our appointments!)

Our train tickets were taking us to Reims – however, we were actually wine tasting in Epernay (about 30 miles or so away). And here is our next problem – in Reims there are no car rentals available on Sundays. We wandered around the train station looking for an information stand (or at least someone who could offer some advice).

There really were no car rentals – so we had to get creative, we floated around ideas of renting a box truck (that facility was actually still closed), finding someone who would rent their personal car, joining another wine tour, or taking another train (2 hours later) to Epernay. Thankfully, we started to crunch the numbers and realized that we could take a taxi there. And then take a train from Epernay back to Reims and carry on to Paris.

We felt like we could finally relax because we were on our way! Jon had researched Chateau Comtesse Lafond as a potential winery to visit. We didn’t have a confirmation – but when Jon called they told us to come in to visit. It was a “special” day – personally, I took that to mean that they had a cancellation and were fine with us coming without a reservation. In reality, it was because they were doing a debut of a new kind of tasting!

When we arrived we were stunned by how beautiful the castle was – and also, how amazing the grounds were. After we finished our mini photoshoot – we were told to head down to the caves. Once we got to the caves, we were given our first glass of champagne- in Champagne!

The winery had a few different stops for us to visit – and also a variety of wines that we would try at each stop. This was our favorite winery of the day! The last stop even included macaroons.

After Comtesse Lafond we began the hunt for a restaurant that was open for lunch on a Sunday. Another unexpected problem – but we were able to find one pretty close to the next wineries.

From lunch we hoofed it over to Moët et Chandon. We had a tour of their facility and then had a glass of champagne in a semi-private room. What I didn’t know is that Moët et Chandon is also part of the Dom Perignon champagne label – one of the best!

Mercier was next – and that was another large champagne producer. Their tour was conducted via audio headsets and you sat in a little train car as they took you through the caves. All of the champagne was good, but nothing could hold a candle to our experience at the first winery.

We got to the train station early – so the workers could actually assist Jon. We realized that there was a train that was going directly to Paris. Jon and the conductor were able to figure out that we could indeed get on that train – and we could get home 2 hours earlier than we had expected. This was definitely good news for us!

Once we got back to Paris we had dinner at a little pizza restaurant that had won some awards with TripAdvisor. (So we knew it would be good). While we were at dinner I pulled up the weather for the next day – and that’s when we realized that there was rain in the forecast.

We had already been disappointed to discover that Versailles and many other museums were closed on Monday, but now it was supposed to rain! We realized that it would be best to do a night tour on the Bateaux Mouche of the Seine river. At this point we were all exhausted, but knew that we would rather sit on a boat without rain.

We’re very glad that we did it – the pictures turned out amazing. And it was a really good experience. We even got to see the shell of Notre Dame after the 2019 fire. It was really badly damaged – we’re looking forward to seeing it again after the restoration is further along.

Up Next:
-Is everything closed in Paris on Mondays?
-Eiffel Tower (maybe??)
-Arc de Triomphe (maybe??)
-Chateau de Vaux Le Vicomte (maybe??)