On the first trip, I managed to meet up with Deep and Jothi in Paris, and spend 3 days seeing the wondrous city. Finding them was very easy - I ran into them at the lobby while checking in. That’s at least one worry out of the way.

Unfortunately, Paris has turned out to be the city where I am cursed to miss everything by 5 minutes. I went to the Friday Night Blade, but missed the roller blade rental shop by 5 minutes (just closed). I went anyway, but had to see them set off. Very cool - six police motorcycles, two cars, and six roller cops clearing the road for the bladers - very much unlike SF's version. Deep and Jothi went to a world cup game (Morocco vs Rumania), but I decided to go blading instead. By the time I figured out I would not get skates, it was too late to go to the football stadium. I went to Arc de Triumph, and was the first person rejected on account of it closing. The mis-timings simply refused to quit.

From Paris we went on our first day of biking (we biked to Versailles), so, of course, it was also the first day it rained since I made it to Europe. Of course, on the bike ride to Versailles, going down the steepest descent, my rear tire, which has served me flawlessly for over 5 years, decides to find a large staple on the road and blow. Fortunately, I had a spare and a patch kit, but making the change was a bit less than fun. Murphy was a European.

The day after our Versailles adventure, we took slow trains to Meaux, continuing to Reims in the Champaign region, as they were the only ones permitting bikes. Again, we almost missed the trains due to our lack of French pronunciation. I called the train authorities to ask from which station and at what time trains to Reims (pronounced REH-ims) departs. The answer I got was a morning time from Gare Montparnasse. This seemed wrong to Deep, as Montparnasse is generally for south-bound trains, so Deep called to make sure. He got the same answer. We biked across the city to the Gare, get our train reservations, look at the tickets and discover that they have us going to Rennes, a large city west of Paris. We point out the error, and after much struggle, write down the city name on a piece of paper for them. “Ah, Reims!” the oh-so-friendly ticket window person declares. The pronunciation used is a guttural sound approaching Rhunns, which I can’t say to this day, though Deep seems to have mastered. As it turns out, the train we want departs from Gare d’Est, clear across the city. We try to get on the Metro to get there, but they do not allow us on with bikes. We have to bike across Paris once again with all of our gear. As we commence, the tire that was patched en route to Versailles gives out again, and I have to re-patch it in a jiffy. We do finally arrive at Gare d’Est, figure out which slow run trains allow us to connect to Reims, and set off.

Reims is a surprisingly nice city that is not very tourist-heavy. We spent a day there, another day biking through the Champaign region to Epernay, and a third day biking around to Sacy. Each of the three days we had a tour of a Champaign producing winery, including a private 2.5 hour tour of Krug by one of the women in the Krug family, which was simply amazing. After learning so much about champagne, we shipped out bikes to Nice (no bikes on trains to Germany, can’t ship them internationally, so had to ship them to the point in France that’s closest to Italy) and set off for Stuttgart, Germany.

We got to see 3 tours of Champaign makers - a good but touristy one (Moet & Chandon), a great one that is less touristy one (Vivue Cliquot), and one that was simply incredible (Krug). At Krug, I called and pleaded in my best puppy-dog voice for a visit. The woman on the other side said that it's private only, but after some chatting, she agreed to see us in 2 day's time as she had an English-speaking visitor during that time.

We showed up, but the other visitor did not, and we got an amazing, personal tour for just the 3 of us from the woman who ended up being part of the family who has owned the Champaignery from the beginning (the Krug clan). She spent 2.5 hours with us, split a full bottle for tasting at the end, and had conversations on many topics putting us much at ease. We were extremely lucky to land that visit before having to set out for Germany.

I returned to Paris alone from Spain on the afternoon of Friday, July 31. Having been rebuffed in my last attempt to join Roller Paris on a Friday evening, I made sure to rent my roller blades with plenty of time to spare, and went roller blading along with about 3000 Parisians from 10 p.m. until about 2 am. It was a blast! The following two days were spent hanging out with Michelle, visiting Paris museums and sites, having nice French food and relaxing.

On August 3, I took an early train to Bayeux in Normandy to see some museums and the famous Bayeux Tapestry from Norman times. The afternoon entailed a bus tour of D-Day Beaches of Normandy to bring me back into the 20th century.

August 4 did not offer much sleep either as I started out at 6 am in order to catch the morning Eurostar train through the chunnel (lots of fun!) to London, England.