Paris and Champagne

If you have been reading my blog diligently like you know you should be, you would know that I have a slight allergy to smug personalities and have left Florence with my family to venture to Paris. Your previous knowledge of my slight physical flaw and physical relocation will help you relate to my experience in France.

Paris was one of the more popular destinations that I didn’t travel too during my time abroad. So I was a bit excited to finally see this so fabled and highly touted city. I can first say that you can’t deny the beauty of the city. Hang around the Siene river and you will be subject to many exceptional views. The pictures with this post serve as a small testament. You keep in mind that they were taken with a mid-level digital camera at night and on the move. So if these images can be produced in such circumstance you can imagine what the real thing looks like.

HOWEVER in the end I was not as impressed with Paris as I thought I might be. There are countless Jazz clubs, museums, theaters, and historical buildings to see, they make the allure of Paris quite apparent. But the inhabitants (parigans ) seem to realize just how exceptional their city is and this causes their world views, tastes, and idea of acceptable people to end at the city limits. This “Paris frame of mind” is very apparent. But I don’t want to discourage you from visiting or skew your view of the city. There are good qualities to Paris, I suggest you visit and make up you own mind about it

France is well known for its Champagne and its so happens that our first full day in France my family and I took a tour of the Champagne region of France. Now it is a truth that the only real Champagne in the world comes from the region of Champagne. This is because the sparkling drink was invented and named after that particular region. It is the same way that they only real Chianti red wine comes from southern Tuscany in the Chianti region.

Champagne was a wonderfully beautiful area. Long sweeping green hills, thick forests, the whole deal. I didn’t get a chance to get many good pictures of the region. But you can take my word, it was a beautiful region and when have I ever steered you wrong (discount the time I had you invest in lead bottomed rowboats). We had a couple tastings and even saw the grave of Dom paragon the monk (yes monk) who invented champagne. It was cool to see the amount of production and tradition involved in the champagne process. It is a very lucrative business and I feel it always will be. To top it all off we saw a old barrel of Champagne that Napoleon himself got krunk off of. If intoxicated world conquers/ kingdom exiles is your sort of thing you would have loved it