This morning we said goodbye to our Champagne farmhouse and headed 3 hours south to Burgundy.

The first place we stopped is called Clos du Vougeot. It used to be a winery built by monks many centuries ago. We had a tour and lunch/ tasting. The building is no longer used for wine making but was very interesting to see.

After the tour we had lunch and a tasting. It was nice, but we had some difficulty understanding the descriptions….. and a little bit long winded.

After that we headed to Chandon de Briailles for a tasting. We are also staying on the property for two nights in a little back house. The wines were excellent and the property is beautiful.

Tomorrow, we have a couple more tasting and may try to explore the city a bit.

Special shout out to all those that are making this trip possible. We literally couldn’t do it without you. You know who you are.

Today, we started with a champagne tasting at H. Billiot (at 9:30 🤪). We tried a few different champagnes and bought some to take with us. Then headed back to our hotel to get ready for a fancy shmancy lunch.

I didn’t get much of a chance to elaborate on the place we are staying, but it’s super cute. It seems like a renovated farm house. It has all the modern amenities and lots of charm.

The husband and wife stay on property and cook breakfast in the morning. The made us scrambled eggs and had a beautiful bread basket with croissants, baguettes, and pain au chocolate.

Lunch was at Assiette Champenois. It was so so nice and delicious! We started out with a glass of champagne on the patio. I couldn’t stop looking at the lawn mower robot. I was mesmerized. It is basically a roomba but for the lawn. So cool!

After that, we moved into the dining room and had an incredible meal. I don’t really know what everything was, so I’ll let the pictures tell the story!

I forgot to mention that we got the wine pairing (which we don’t usually do). Needless to say, they basically had to roll me out of there.

But, the fun didn’t stop, because we were off to another champagne tasting. This one at Villemart. We had a tour and a very nice guide. We tasted 5 champagnes that were all wonderful. Honestly, the details get a bit (alot) fuzzy at this point 😬 .

One thing that we are hearing consistently from all of the champagne houses that we have visited is that 2021 was an extremely difficult year for wine making. There was hail, rain, frost, mildew. All the tough stuff in 1 year. We have heard that some winemakers lost 100% of their crop. I can’t imagine how devastating that can be for some of the smaller winemakers 💔.

Well, we are off to Burgundy tomorrow morning!

One quick thing to add that always makes me laugh. At these super high end places that we have been eating, they don’t put any prices on my menu…. only on Justin’s. Of course, it doesn’t matter (as it all comes from the same pot), but still amusing. I guess it’s a French custom.

Better go to bed, Justin said we are leaving at a firm 8:30….. I’ve been pushing these limits a bit, so I need to get my act together!

This morning, we left Paris at a firm 8:30 (per the travel Captain). We are headed to Champagne for 2 nights and have our first tasting at 11:00.

Getting out of the city center was challenging. There are cars, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, and bicycles coming from every direction. The actual lanes seem to be more optional and everyone is just doing their own thing. Luckily we neither hit anybody nor need to file for divorce. Justin didn’t appreciate my “helpful” comments from the passenger seat. 😬😬

Fortunately, we made it to our first tasting safe and sound. It is a smaller House called Larmandier-Bernier. We had a nice tour and tasting. We have been on many wine tours, but this was our first champagne tour. It was very interesting hearing about the process and how it differed from regular wine making. The champagne was good as well, so we took a few bottles to go.

Our next tour was at Billecart-Salmon. My sweet friend, Karen, gifted me with a bottle of the rose’ champagne about a year ago so I was familiar with the House (although we didn’t drink the bottle until my last birthday which was not too long ago). It is Karen’s favorite and now I understand why.

Billecart-Salmon is family owned over 7 generations. We had a wonderful and informative tour, got to view the property, and taste some very high end champagne. They were pouring the good stuff.

After the tour, we went back to our room. We are staying in a place that’s not quite a hotel but not quite a vacation rental. It is a nice room (that’s not within a main house), but the owner stays on property and she and her husband prepare breakfast etc. It has plenty of space and should work out great.

For dinner, we ate at a place called Les Jardin Brasserie. It was a bit underwhelming after all the fanatic meals we had had in the last few days. I guess we were due one of those.

Anyway, day 2 in champagne tomorrow. The schedule is: champagne tasting, fancy lunch, champagne tasting. We better rest up (lol).

So, nothing really went as planned today. We were supposed to do 2 walking tours. I really enjoy walking tours because I like to hear the little stories and details behind what I’m looking at. Well, we woke up this morning and it was raining. Plus, we are still a bit jet laggy and moving slowly in the morning. It was easier to just skip it. The weather was supposed to clear up so we figured that we could just hit up the second one in the afternoon. It also gave Justin more time to pick up the rental car since we leave for Champagne tomorrow.

I hung out at the hotel while he got the car. Luckily, I was there because the rental place needed to see the credit card that was used to book the reservation. Now, Justin has alot of credit cards. He doesn’t carry them all with him at once. Luckily, modern technology let me get into the safe and into his “backup wallet (?)” that contained the correct card. Apparently, they also tried to give him a manual rather than automatic car, and he had to pull up the reservation and show them that he indeed booked an automatic car. If you have rented a car in Europe, you know what I’m talking about. These things just don’t go smoothly.

While I was hanging out in the room, I worked out (yes, I’m one of those people) and took a shower.

Well, I mentioned in an earlier post that I forgot about the voltage issue when in comes to electrical devices ie my blow dryer brush. But, I had a plan in place. I was going to use the hotel blow dryer and my dryer brush as a round brush. What I didn’t prepare for was the blow dryer overhearing after 5 minutes of use and then needed 5 minutes to cool down before working again. We were on a time crunch to make our second tour. After alot of drama and a call to the front desk, I got my hair reasonably dry and blown out before we flew out the door for a brisk walk to our tour

What we didn’t plan for was the (what I believe was) protest blocking many streets that we needed to go down. Long story short, we missed the tour. My mood was….. sour.

The tour was of the Montmarte area of Paris. I was really interested in hearing the story of the neighborhood, but maybe next time. We did get to walk up to the Sacre Coeur Church and saw a beautiful panoramic view of the city.

After that we had an unbelievable meal at Kei. This was a 7 course tasting. The chef is Japanese so, it has many Asian influences while still being primarily French based.

It was such an amazing meal!

Tomorrow, we get up and moving early to get to Champagne. It’s about a 2 hour drive, and we have a tasting at 11am.

A few things I’ve noticed:

The people in Paris wear long sleeves, long pants, boots etc. They are very covered up. It’s not that cold out here. I’m used to the people in New Orleans wearing flip flops in the winter. I haven’t seen an open toe shoe yet.

Our toilet hasn’t worked since we got here. It’s a situation is rather not elaborate on.

Justin does not know how to take a flattering selfie of the 2 of us. If he tells me “that’s just what you look like” one more time…..

I still haven’t seen Cardi B

Anyway, off to Champagne tomorrow!

Today we had a multi-course lunch and dinner planned. This is one of our “big dining” days. Most of the other days we just have one meal planned per day.

So, for lunch we went to a restaurant called Septime. Through Justin’s research, he heard that this place is very highly regarded and tough to get into. We had a fantastic meal. It has a much more casual atmosphere than L’Orangerie, where we are last night. It’s sort of like an upscale bistro with very high quality food.

The menu was a 5 course tasting menu. Each dish was extremely flavourful and creative (without sacrificing taste).

I can elaborate on the food if anyone is interested, but I (generally) think it comes off kinda obnoxious and pretentious sounding and that’s just not my thing. Also, we didn’t get a menu so I only have a vague idea of what everything is.

After lunch, we decided to go to the Louvre. Yesterday, we just walked around the outside. I’m so glad that we went in today. The building alone is so gorgeous. I spend most of the time looking at the elaborate ceilings. We caught a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, but there was a mob/ line around her so we kept walking.

I enjoyed seeing the crown jewels and incredible chandeliers. I think we missed that last time.

It was a beautiful day today, so we decided to walk back to the hotel rather than take the subway.

Dinner was at Alleno Paris at Ledoyen (hotel). It is a 3 Michelin Star restaurant (if you are into that kind of thing), and it was everything it should have been. The service, presentation, and atmosphere were impeccable. It was many courses and there wasn’t one in the bunch that missed the mark. I mean, it started with a champagne cart. So, how could it go wrong.

Everything was perfection. It even ended with a tour of the kitchen and a meeting with the chef (who is not much older than us and Italian….. surprising for a traditional French restaurant).

After a nice walk back to the hotel, we are stuffed and ready for bed

Tomorrow brings 2 walking tours and our last day in Paris then off to Champagne.

So, obviously, many things have changed in the past 18 months. Travel has changed. I’m not going to go into all of that right now, but traveling has become significantly more complicated. But, here we are.

Our itinerary for this trip is as follows:

Paris to champagne to Burgundy to Rhone to Nice then home (about 2 weeks total). Honestly, I’m not even sure how many nights we are in each place. I know that we will be moving. ALOT. Justin has prepared me for that. We did not bring James on this trip. Besides the fact that he is in school, this is a more “adult” trip than we have taken in a while. Lots of wining and dining.

Our travel to Paris went extremely smoothly, considering all the extraneous factors that have made international travel more complicated. To enter France, you have to be vaccinated (I’m pretty sure. I’ll have to confirm with Justin, but he’s sleeping). This was not a problem for us. We also had to get an app on our phone with our vaccine information that is used in France. This “safe travel” passport gives a QR code that needs to be presented at restaurants and museums etc. Justin can speak more about this because, from what he told me, it was a pain in the butt.

Anyway, we flew Delta from New Orleans to Atlanta and then Air France from Atlanta to Paris. There were no issues at all. Business class to Paris was nice and we were able to get a few hours of sleep before landing.

We landed around 6:30 am Paris time. It was dark and rainy. Luckily, we were able to check into out hotel right away. We are staying at the Park Hyatt Vendome. It is super fancy. We have stayed here before (about 7 years ago…I was pregnant for James). We got a status upgrade with points and have a beautiful suite.

Per the leader of the anti-jet lag task force (aka Justin), we should not go to sleep right away. Blah blah blah. We went to have a quick hotel breakfast (included in the room) and around 11am took a 3 hour nap….but no longer 🙃

After that, we did a whirl wind tour of Paris highlights. The Paris Opera House, The Lourve, the Arc de Triumph (which is covered in wrapping for some unknown reason), and the Eiffel Tower.

After many steps and Subway rides, it was time to do a quick change for dinner.

For dinner, we ate at the Four Seasons at a restaurant called L’Orangerie. It was outstanding. It was a 7 course tasting menu. Each course was better than the next.

I’m not going to elaborate on each one because half the time, I didn’t know what I was eating.

With full bellies, we headed back to the hotel.

A couple of things to add: It is Paris Fashion week right now. I know you are surprised, but that’s not why we placed this trip. It has caused some issues getting around because some areas are blocked off.

It’s rumored that Cardi B was staying in our hotel.

I forgot that my blowdryer brush is the wrong voltage so expect my hair to get significantly worse as the week goes by unless I can find a reasonable solution.

And, lastly, I’m trying to post Instagram stories. I’ve never done it before. I feel like my mom when I was trying to teach her how to copy and paste. 🤪

I’m doing my best and hopefully they improve throughout the trip.

Alyce