Une Excursion à Reims (A Day Trip to Reims)

Like Rouen and Orléans, the city of Reims is a short train ride from Paris. It's the largest city in the Champagne region, so it's a popular choice as a day trip for tourists looking to tour a local winery. Even on a cool, cloudy day in February, most of the winery tours were fully booked (although there may have been more availability on a weekday), but fortunately I reserved a spot ahead of time.

I arrived around noon on a Saturday, so I had a shorter day for looking around the city, but Reims is a small city so getting around on foot took very little time.

The Subé Fountain on one of the main shopping streets was closed due to restoration work, so I only saw the upper section of the monument.

I started the day by visiting the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Reims, one of the more famous Gothic cathedrals in France (I'd say third after Paris and Rouen, maybe fourth if you count Chartres). As it was the tourist off-season, part of the façade was undergoing restoration work, so I didn't get a full view of the building's exterior.

The interior of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Reims looks very similar to its counterparts in Paris, Rouen and Orléans.

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame includes a variety of stained glass windows with different colour schemes. This set of windows also had a scale model of the cathedral just below it.

The Palais du Tau is right next to the cathedral, but it was closed until later in the day, so I took a 10 minute walk to the other side of downtown and visited the Abbey of Saint-Remi.

A sculpture in the Abbey of Saint-Remi. Like the cathedral, this abbey had detailed stained glass windows, but the pictures weren't as easy to view due to the cloudy weather and the fact that the rest of the lights were turned off for the day I visited.

Reims does not have any major rivers running through it, which is odd for a city founded in 80 BC, but there is a large canal running along the west side. I imagine the canal helps to irrigate the vineyards in the area.

I wandered around the southern part of the city and felt like I was in a newly built suburb of Paris. There were modern buildings and relatively plain parks everywhere. By mid-afternoon, I went to the Vranken Pommery champagne house, which is housed in a set of buildings designed to look like a new palace with a Gothic twist, which probably holds some appeal for tourists but I thought it seemed too campy for a 150 year old champagne producer.

The interior of the Vranken Pommery champagne house contains a giant blending barrel with a capacity of 75,000 liters. The tour takes visitors through the underground caves where the champagne is aged, but the lighting was too dark to take any good photos.

The tour of the production facility was very informative, highlighting the different grapes used and the fermentation process. Vranken Pommery's facilities also included some artwork that the owners have incorporated into the underground caves, partly due to their love of art, but I think also to add to the tourist appeal. A champagne was served at the end of the tour and it was by far and away the best champagne I've ever had (although I don't drink it often). A vineyard was not included in the tour as there wasn't much to see, but I walked further south after the tour and took a look anyway.

Southeast of the champagne houses is a vineyard operated by Vranken Pommery, although at this time of year nothing is growing.

By the time I got back to the northern side of downtown, the Palais du Tau was open. The palace along with the neigbouring Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Abbey of Saint-Remi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The palace was originally the residence of the Archbishop of Reims, but is now a museum displaying various historical artifacts related to the cathedral and to the coronation of French kings.

The Palais du Tau displays several items from the treasury of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Reims, including a talisman worn by Charlemagne. Another visitor thought the talisman was designed to refract a cross in the middle of the sapphire, but I think it's just a reflection of anyone looking directly into the gem.

Several rooms in the Palais du Tau display the original statues and tapestries of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. At the end of this room is the original display from the central portal of the cathedral.

After the Palais du Tau, I strolled around the city and took a quick look at some of the lesser known sites around the train station, such as the Porte Mars, the Chapelle Foujita and the Hotel de Ville, but the latter two sites were closed.

Reims is very modern compared to other French cities, so this was one of the few timber framed buildings in the area. There were various specialty shops on the ground floor.

So that was Reims on a short day trip. There were a couple of other museums in the city that I could have also visited, but none of them were highly rated by travel sites or provided a subject of interest for me. As a result, I feel like the city should only be considered as a day trip from Paris if you have a strong interest in champagne or if you have some compulsion to see every major Gothic cathedral in France. Still, the trip made for a laid-back Saturday with little cost, time or energy required.

Vjaġġ lejn Malta (Trip to Malta)

I've decided to try mixing in a few destinations that are somewhat out of the way from Paris, on the basis that if they are cumbersome to reach from Canada but still reasonably accessible from within Europe, then going to these places takes better advantage of my time in Paris. Malta is one of those destinations, and it has the added bonus of providing warm weather in early February. Temperatures during the day were around 21ºC with an intermittent cold wind that made it feel more like 10ºC. This meant frequent layering/delayering when outdoors.

The timing of flights to and from Paris for my targeted weekend was awkward (usually early afternoons), so I left early on Friday to effectively end up with two days of touring spread over three days.

Day 1

The first thing I noticed with Malta is that the country has retained a few elements of its time as a British colony: cars drive on the left; everyone can speak English fluently (although I heard a mix of different accents); and, there tended to be more social cohesion and friendliness between people everywhere I went (but the dispersion of people into small towns probably also contributed to this).

However, each city that I visited reminded me of the Italian towns in Tuscany, in that there were no suburbs: everyone in the city appears to live in cramped apartments, and the farms suddenly begin just outside the city limits. This goes back to the days where everyone tried to live next to a castle or fortress in order to quickly seek safety when the city was attacked.

I was based in Valletta during my stay and the city was small enough that I was able to quickly walk to a few of the main sites within the walled city before sunset.

The Church of Our Lady of Victory is small but has a beautiful interior. The murals on the ceiling were a portent to what I would see at other sites in Valletta.

The Grandmaster's Palace is also small but well decorated in a classic style, with ornate ceilings and floors as well as guard's or knight's armour standing every 20 feet.

The Armoury is next to the palace and is comprised of only two large rooms (one for armour and one for weapons), but the displays included plenty of interesting history on the equipment used by St. John's Knights when they repelled the Ottomon siege in 1565.

After visiting 25 European countries over the past year and a half, I've lost some of that sense of wonder that comes with seeing major landmarks for the first time. Not that I've gone to seeing every site as "meh", but I felt like nothing was really jaw-dropping for me anymore. I had planned on going to St. John's Co-Cathedral without having done any research on it, only knowing that it's the top-rated site to visit in Malta, so I went there expecting a well-decorated cathedral comparable to other cathedrals I've seen in Italy, Spain and France, but perhaps with the style of the church and palace I had seen earlier in the day. But when I saw the interior of this cathedral... jaw. dropped.

The interior of St. John's Co-Cathedral facing the main altar. My camera cannot do justice to the detailed artwork of the floors, the epic murals on the ceilings, or the ornate gilding in every archway. The lighting was also a bit dark as it was cloudy during the afternoon that I visited.

The cathedral was large and decorated to a level of grandeur that I think even (slightly) exceeds Versailles, Schönbrunn, or the Royal Palace in Madrid. Nearly everything in the main area (floors, ceilings and walls) was over the top. I was left wondering why at least one of the countless travel websites out there doesn't place this cathedral on its top places to visit list. Maybe it's because the rest of Malta is relatively modest by European standards, but St. John's Co-Cathedral is definitely one of the more under-rated sites that I've encountered during my travels. I recommend doing a Google image search and taking a better look at the interior (the exterior is surprisingly plain in comparison).

One of the side chapels in St. John's Co-Cathedral.

After the cathedral, I had enough time before sunset to visit both the Upper Barrakka Gardens and the Lower Barrakka Gardens. Both parks are small, but have some interesting sculptures and a view of Valletta's Grand Harbour.

At the center of the Lower Barrakka Gardens is a small neo-classical temple.

I didn't originally plan to attend any football matches in Malta, but when I noticed all of the jerseys and scarves in the souvenir shops, I decided to check to see if there were any matches going on that weekend. It turned out that FC Valletta was playing Mosta that night, so I looked up the stadium location and went out to a complex of stadiums about a 45 minute bus ride away from Valletta. But... when I arrived, the main stadium was closed, so I went to the smaller stadium next door and watched a Malta First Division match (one level below their premier division) between Melita and Gzira United. It turns out that, in my haste, I looked up the wrong stadium and went running off to the middle of nowhere in Malta to watch what I would call semi-professional football (gah!). Gzira United dominated the match and won 4-1. Next time, I'll look up all the details of a football match before I arrive in a city.

A match between Melita and Gzira United in a training ground next to Ta'Qali National Stadium. I think there were about 30 people in attendance.

It's not that I missed much anyways. By the time I got back, the Carnival festivities in Valletta were still parading through the streets and I planned on seeing the same floats and costumes during the following day anyway.

Day 2

The second day was my only full day in Malta, so I had reserved it for travelling to other parts of the country. The first stop was to Mdina, which has an old town that is rated as one of the top places to visit. While the small old city has a rustic charm, it still seemed somewhat plain. I suspect the high rating might be partially due to the fact that the city was used for filming scenes set in the fictional King's Landing during the first season of Game of Thrones (Dubrovnik was used thereafter).

Mdina is surrounded by fortifications such that the only public entrance is through its main gate.

The most notable building in Mdina is St. Paul's Cathedral. Its interior is well lit from the windowed dome above the main altar.

Visiting Malta in February saved me a bit of time, because the lack of tourist traffic allowed me to travel to Mdina and see the old city in under two hours. This gave me more time to travel across the main island of Malta, take the ferry to the island of Gozo and then travel across Gozo to the Azure Window. This is a limestone arch that formed after two sea caves collapsed. Apparently some tourists even try jumping off the arch during the summer, although there have been numerous injuries resulting from doing this.

The Azure Window. This photo is a bit crooked, but most of my other shots suffered from the bright glare of the sun that day.

A shot of the coast of Gozo, seen from the top of the Azure Window. There were a lot of tourists visiting this site, but only a small fraction of them bothered to climb up the arch.

Just east of the Azure Window is the Inland Sea, which is like an inlet accessible via a sea cave (on the left). Sightseeing companies use this area for deploying small tour boats.

I used public transit to get across Gozo, which involved transferring at a small city (Victoria) at the center of the island. On my way back, I took some time to look around and visited Victoria's citadel. The fortress was even plainer than Mdina, but from atop its walls you could get a good view of the surrounding area (mostly farms).

A view from the Victoria Citadel.

I arrived back in Valletta during the evening and watched an assortment of Carnival floats parading along the main street of the city. The floats were elaborate, usually involving large mechanical figurines with moving arms and torsos. It felt like the parade was geared towards a younger crowd though, as each float was accompanied with a speaker system blaring high tempo techno.

One of the floats in the Carnival parade in Valletta.

Day 3

 

I had enough time before my flight to take longer visits at two sites in Valletta, but it turns out that the Casa Rocca Piccola is closed on Sundays. So I went to the National War Museum at Fort St. Elmo instead. The museum provided an overview of Malta's interesting history of successfully defending itself against the Ottoman siege in 1565 and of fending off an Italian invasion during World War II and then enduring heavy bombing. The museum's exhibits were mostly signage, but one noticable exception was the display of the actual George Cross awarded to Malta by King George VI in 1942 (the same cross shown on the country's flag).

At Fort St. Elmo, there is a daily reenactment of 16th century Maltese guards in training. 

I did not arrive in Valletta early enough on Friday to see the daily Saluting Battery, so I crossed the city (which is small enough to take 10 minutes) to the Upper Barrakka Gardens where you can see a cannon fired at exactly noon each day. This was an old tradition originally conducted to enable nearby ships to synchronize their clocks.

The fountain at the center of the Upper Barrakka Gardens.

The Saluting Battery overlooking the Grand Harbour. This was taken shortly after the Maltese officer fired the cannon to his left.

Below the Upper Barrakka Gardens and the Saluting Battery are the Lascaris War Rooms. These were the actual tunnels and rooms used by Allied commanders during the invasion of Sicily and throughout World War II. Most of the rooms were simple offices with a desk, chair and a few maps, but two of the rooms were similar to what you would see in a movie where a large table map hosts a variety of model ships that junior officers would slide across the map using the equivalent of pool cues.

One of the larger planning areas among the Lascaris War Rooms.

 

That was Malta in two days. I did not have time to visit two of the country's other UNESCO World Heritage sites and the February winds were too cold to enjoy any of the beaches, but I felt like I got a comprehensive, albeit cursory, view of some of the major attractions. The laidback atmosphere makes these islands a terrific vacation spot for Anglophones, and while most of the sites are relatively modest, St. John's Co-Cathedral is an impressive spectacle that stands out amongst its counterparts across Europe.



Une Excursion à Orléans (A Day Trip to Orleans)

Paris has been rainy but a bit warmer than usual for late January. As for other the rest of Europe, most of the cities that I want to visit next are still too cold, so I spent a day visiting Orléans to hold me over while I wait for warmer days. The advantage to Orléans is that the city is only one hour away from Paris by train, and there are enough sites there to fill a day (but not enough to spend a whole weekend). So the planning for this trip was simple and the cost was negligible. The downside was that, like Nice last year, I experienced cloudy, damp weather, which diminished the experience of some sites (including those indoors).

The top-rated site to visit in Orléans is the Cathedrale Ste-Croix (aka the Orléans Cathedral). The building is large and has an imposing (although relatively simple) exterior that can be seen all the way down Rue Jeanne D'Arc. The interior contains stained glass windows with detailed pictures outlining important events in the history of Orléans.

The interior of the Cathedral Ste-Croix, from the back facing the main altar.

The Cathedral Ste-Croix contains several beautifully designed stained glass windows as well as a few sculptures. The windows were not as radiant as they would have been on a sunny day, but the intricate designs were still clearly visible.

Right next to the cathedral is the main art museum, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which contains European art from the 15th to 20th century. Most of the works were by artists that would be well known to an art buff but they certainly weren't household names (although there were two famous Rodin sculptures in the basement).

One of the main display rooms in the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

The Eglise Saint-Aignan was closed when I passed by and it was starting to rain, so I went back to the central part of the city where there was more cover available. I decided to visit the Maison de Jeanne D'Arc even though I had read a number of negative reviews. It's basically a museum dedicated to Joan of Arc, who was initially made famous by helping to stop the siege against Orléans in 1429. However, I guess the museum is still under development, because there wasn't much to it aside from two information screens and a small theater where you could watch a 15 minute documentary about the Maid of Orléans. At least the building had a well-designed exterior and with a bit more work I can imagine it will become a fully functional museum.

The exterior of the Maison de Jeanne d'Arc is brick with timber framing, giving it a beautiful medieval style when seen up close.

Orléans does not have a lot of half-timbered buildings, but the few around the city have real timber, which makes it feel more authentic than the painted faux-timber buildings in Rouen.

The promenade along the Loire river was spacious and I can imagine it could host various vendors, cyclists, joggers or artists during warmer weather. The bridges crossing the river were all plain.

It began to rain more heavily by the late afternoon, so I cancelled my plans to visit the Parc Floral, which was across the Loire on the south side of the city. Instead, I visited the Parc Louis Pasteur, which contained a few sculptures and even the remains of a gate for what may have been the city walls (although I think it was relocated from elsewhere).

The main fountain and pool in the Parc Louis Pasteur.

I had passed by the Hotel Groslot (aka Hotel de Ville) earlier in the day, but couldn't enter due to a wedding at the time, but I quickly stopped by in the evening to visit after everyone had left. There were only about six rooms available to the public and they were ornately designed, although it was already dark outside so the rooms didn't shine as much as they would have during the day.

One of the larger rooms in the Hotel Groslot.

I walked through the Place du Martroi (essentially the town square) several times during the day, but the best photos were available after the clouds cleared and the sun had set. The square is famous for its Joan of Arc statue, and I noticed there were several flowers, candles and other items of sentiment left at its base.

The Place du Martroi during the early evening.

So that was Orléans in a short day trip. The city has enough to offer a relaxing day trip from Paris and was surprisingly very accommodating for tourists (but without being overtly touristy). So while there are more exciting excursions available from Paris, this was a good holdover for January. The weather was less than ideal, but that was difficult to avoid wherever I travelled this time of year. My next trip is to someplace warmer (and hopefully sunnier). I'll post details in another week or so.