I Feel Like A Princess

I love this hotel, but it is by far the most stuffy and proper of any hotel we have stayed at. Jess, not so much, but he will get through the pain. We woke up this morning (me feeling 100% again, yeah!) and as we lay in bed in silence, Jess looked at me and asked what I was thinking about. I am sure he was hoping I would say something mushy in return but in reality what I was thinking was "I'll bet this is what Queen Elizabeth's bedroom looks like and I feel like a princess lying here." It can't have been a total disappointment because he got a good laugh out of it. We went down for breakfast which again, was a very formal affair complete with waiters in jackets, orange juice poured out of swan like decanters, carts of bread, additional pastry carts rolled around for you to make your choices from, and sterling silver coffee pots. I quite enjoyed all the fuss. Again, Jess not so much who would have been happier with an Egg McMuffin (who is pissed that I pictured the photo below but I feel it captures his mood at the time).
After breakfast it was off to tour two champagne houses: Pommery and Taittinger. To be honest, Reims is really quite a boring city and if you have been to Paris or any other French city, there is nothing really new for you to see. Yesterday we were thinking that we had made a mistake by booking 3 nights here but after today we are glad we did. Underground is a totally different story.
Pommery is right across the street from our hotel and we walked by it a few times yesterday thinking it was not super impressive compared to the Chateaux we had seen in other parts of France. It reminded us a bit of Excalibre in Las Vegas. What we didn't know was there are 18 km of tunnels 90 metres underneath the chateau where all the champagne is stored and aged.

(If you look at the picture above, you can see the sign showing that there are 91, 943 bottles in this one particular gallery. Between their two sites, Pommery stores around 23 million bottles at one time)

These champagne caves were built by the Romans when they harvested the chalk to construct buildings. The whole city of Reims has these caves underneath it.

They also bottle champagne in sizes appropriate for when you are dining at home alone (a reasonable 23 litres for a quick lunch).
And they provide these convenient stroller accessories for mothers on the go!
This has been the most amazing trip but the food has been less than amazing. Check out some of our dinner last night. We told the hotel we wanted something casual and they sent us to yet another French bistro where they were mixing up the steak tartar everywhere we turned. It was full of locals... never a good sign for eaters like us.

Jess' Caesar Salad had so many anchovies even he had trouble eating it, barf.
I wasn't feeling well and chewed the first bite of my steak for 5 minutes before I could swallow and decided I was done. I did what we call the 'Barbara Walters.' It is what skinny New York women do. They don't eat but rather, cut their food up and push it around the plate so it looks like they've eaten. For the record, this is only the second time in my life I have done 'The Barbara Walters' and my waistline will back me up on that. Time to turn over a new leaf when we return, but not just yet (Jess laughed out loud when he read this).
Today we found an amazing resaurant. Our goal was to find something NOT French and somewhat trashy. We went to the most touristy part of town and "Hola" Latino Cafe:
Look at these natchos! Straight out of a Doritos bag and we couldn't have been happier.
Burritos, delicous, and peas in the spanish rice... nice touch. 5 stars!!!
Tonight we are having dinner at Le Jardin Brasserie which is in the garden of our hotel and just opened. It is the hot table in town right now and we had to beg to get a reservation. We had a quick lunch there when we arrived at the hotel yesterday and we both liked it so thought keeping to a sure thing would be a good idea.