Reims

We got off the ferry with six travelling days to get to our week-long holiday accommodation in the south of France. That gave us a decent amount of time to explore Europe a bit, and see some of the sights we probably wouldn’t get to see otherwise. We knew we wanted to get to Switzerland for at least a day, so it was this that dictated that we would travel south along eastern France. We had an idea of some of the places we wanted to stop at but ultimately we kept things relatively open: the main thing was getting to the Côte d’Azur by Thursday.

Having gotten up at 5am to catch our boat, we only had one planned stop on the first day of the trip: the town of Reims in north-east France. We got there in the early evening, checked into a hotel, and then headed into the city centre.

Our first challenge was dinner. The Place Drouet d’Erlon has many restaurants and eateries so despite the slightly chilly weather we sat outside for a properly delicious meal.

In the centre of the image above is a statue of something or other. Perhaps you have an idea? I can no more identify statues than I can florae or faunae.

I have to get a closer shot, of course.

After dinner, which was delicious (did I mention it was delicious?), we wandered about the city centre a little more. A soon came across a modern fountain, something which needed capturing with a slower shutter speed.

A short distance from the fountain we came across this carousel.

And next to it, a church which I tried to get a more interesting angle of.

We looped back to the Place Drouet d’Erlon, and got ourselves another angle on the fountain, this time with the mysterious winged golden statue in the background.

It was beginning to get dark and cold, so we decided to head out to the city’s canal before looping back to our car to return to our hotel. This required walking down one of the trammed streets.

We finally reached the canal, and I took the time to rest my camera on the edge and get a bit of a longer shutter time to capture the traffic in motion.

We returned to our hotel for a well-earned kip. The next morning, we got up, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed on to our next port of call. You’ll have to catch the next post to see where we ended up.