Reims and Cheese

Last weekend I had the chance to visit the town of Reims with my host family. My host dad is from that city and his mom and dad live there, and they were going to go visit for the weekend and invited me to come with them. I accepted the invitation and headed off to Reims without knowing much about the city but that it is known for it's Cathedral and that it's in the champagne region of France.

It was such a beautiful town, very calm like Lille but it had a different charm to it. It felt very bourgeoisie, very rich and I guess that's because of the champagne hehe. We arrived on saturday afternoon and we stayed the whole day inside the grandma's house which was an 18th (or 19th century not sure) house! It made me feel like I was traveling back in time and it was quite cool to get to see such an old house, to see what houses back then were like.  Of course, at night it was another situation...I was scared! The room I stayed in was in the last floor (there was 3 floors to the house) and well I was quite far away from my host family and for some reason that made me feel uneasy... Hahah I know, I'm such a scary cat! I have always felt a bit uneasy sleeping in older houses by myself, I guess I believe too much in spirits. However I did sleep quite well! The bed was very comfortable.

Saturday night we went to go see a show which was a mix of african dancing and acrobats. The performers did all these different kind of tricks, somewhat cirque du soleil style. We then headed back home and had dessert( we didn't have time to eat dessert before the show) which I was surprised that we were actually going to have dessert at 10 pm! I guess dessert is more important than I thought in french culture. The kids had their usual chocolate dessert (I know, chocolate at 10 pm! The french love their chocolate) and the adults had cheese with baguette. That night my dear readers, will be remembered as the night I fell in love with cheese. 

Cheese, cheese,cheese.

I had already tried one or two different kinds of cheese with my host family, but I had not liked them AT all, they were so strong and gross! I couldn't even swallow, it was too much. So of course, I was now very hesitant about cheese, thinking that they would all be as strong. But the grandma bought different kinds of cheese from different regions in France. I can't really remember the names of all of them, but I liked most of them which surprised the family! My favorite was Beaufort which was so good (and the mom bought some recently! I saw it in the fridge, I of course already had some hehe, and will have some again now for lunch!) I also tried Munchster, which was a bit on the strong side but it was good too. I tried to remember the names of the cheeses that I liked but there's just so many! I became instantly obsessed with the combination of cheese and baguette that I could not wait until sunday lunch to have some more cheese!

On sunday, my host dad and host mom brought me to the Cathedral and to walk around for a while. Let me tell you, the Cathedral was so beautiful. I was so impressed at all the details, the size of the church, everything! Well okay, not everything because I found the inside was a bit more on the "bland" side, but from what I've seen that's usually the case with churches. Beautiful and extravagant from the outside but more simple in the inside (with an exception of Notre Dame in Montreal!).

Here are some pictures...

The famous smiling angel

This Cathedral is famous because this is where they crowned all the Kings of France. The roof of the church was also once completely destroyed during the war (I think it was WW2, sorry I keep forgetting all these small but important details! ) and if you look around the walls outside, you can see bullet holes. In fact, if you walk around town and look at old buildings, you can see many bullet holes or tiny squares which are covered bullet holes. What I learned about Reims is that it was pretty destroyed after the war, so much that the population went from around a couple of thousands to 400! This made it harder for the city to recover and it took a while for it to get rebuilt, but that they got a lot of funding/help from the United States.

It was really nice to get to see another French city, even though I wish I could've seen more. But I'm sure there's going to be another weekend I can go with the family. I would recommend visiting Reims for two days or so, it is a small town like Lille, not too far from Paris and of course full of history from what I learned that weekend!