Saturday morning saw us walking
around Reims following the trail provided by the tourist information
office. To be honest we weren’t
impressed with many of the places on the trail, but we were impressed with
Reims as a city. Cynically, we wondered
if the places on the tour sponsor the tourist trail guide so that’s why they
were featured. It reminded us of a town
we visited in Burgundy where we had the same experience. As expected, the first place of interest was
the cathedral that we looked at yesterday but we found the exterior far more
impressive than the inside.
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| The Palace of Tau next to the cathedral |
The palace of Tau is where the kings of France stayed during their coronations at the cathedral. The art deco library sponsored by the
Scottish born American philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, was quite different
with its clean-cut lines. Photos cannot
do it justice I’m afraid.
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| The library built in the 1920s |
After seeing a few more impressive
buildings that weren’t on the tour we made our way to the fruit & veg market
halls at the top end of town.
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| Couldn’t find out what this was… |
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| …but this was obviously the hôtel de ville |
There were many squares with plenty
of bars as you would expect in a city, but they weren’t exactly thronged with
tourists.
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| Place Royale |
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| Place Forum |
At Place Forum we were hoping to
visit the Gallo-Roman Cryptoporticus but, as is our luck sometimes, it wasn’t due
to open until later in the afternoon. Built
in the second century it a series of arched galleries that were believed to
have been a covered market.
On the other side of the Place
Forum we were attracted by the cobblestones on Rue de Tambour which is purported
to be the oldest street in the city.
The cobblestones were painted in
April this year following a decision by the centre of commerce to brighten the
city up. They colours were certainly striking,
and we were reminded of cities like Carcassonne where brightly coloured umbrellas
are hung above some streets.
After a successful trip to the
market we went in search of the ‘promenades’.
These form a series of gardens one and half kilometres long running in a straight line from
the north end of town, past the station and across to the western end where
they meet the canal. Not much was open
as a €10 million refurbishment was in progress although the signs indicated
that it was due to be complete in June this year! When completed, they will be wonderful to walk
around especially when shade is needed.
The northern end is dominated by
la Porte de Mars, another Roman structure built in the 2nd century. This was one of the four gates that allowed access
to the walled city of Durocortorum.
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| No access to la Porte de Mars at the moment |
There are many carvings around the
arches including one depicting Romulus and Remus. It was only when reading
about it later that I found out, that according to the legend, Remus founded
Reims.
Walking on the streets to the side
of the promenades we thought we were probably in the commercial district as the
side streets were so empty like the City of London on a Sunday.
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| An empty side street |
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| Not closed off, probably because there were no gardens to redevelop here |
At the end we met the canal at the
convention centre and made our way back home along the waterside. There’s an Aldi right next to the canal about
two kilometres further down through Reims so we took a quick cruise down there
in the afternoon for our weekly shop.
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| Going through the port on our way to Aldi |
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| Passing the convention centre at the end of the promenades |
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| Never moored this close to a railway line before |
Karen went over to do the shopping
and gave me a call when I was needed to walk over and help her with the
shopping bags. Not only did this keep me
out of her way while she was shopping it also meant we didn’t have to lock the
boat up.
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| Bringing the shopping back by rail 😉 |
After getting back to our original
mooring spot we spent the rest of the day at the boat, once again, watching the many
runners and rowers on the canal.
On Saturday we cruised four
kilometres through no locks.
We were going to head off back
down the Canal l’Aisne à la Marne towards Châlons-en-Champagne on Sunday but by
mid-morning decided to stay put in Reims for another day and move off on
Monday. Other than an ambling walk
around the western end of Reims, we had a lazy morning followed by early lunch.
In the afternoon we went for a
longer walk taking in a park and the Cryptoporticus that was closed yesterday. Unintentionally, this was the third day on the
trot that we had walked past the cathedral, each day we passed a new side that
we hadn’t seen before. As expected, the Cryptoporticus
was open and we took turns at going in as dogs weren’t allowed. It was absolutely fascinating to think that
the place had been built nearly 2,000 years ago, although the floor was re-laid
during the excavation and renovation works.
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| The only side of the original four that remains |
We had noticed cars parking in the
road by the boat before we left for our walk and soon realised that they were
football supporters. Reims were playing Lille
in a Ligue 1 match in the afternoon and if we had thought about it, we would
have seen if we could have got tickets.
It would be interesting to go to a football match over here.
Seeing the crowds walking to the
match made us wonder about the logistics away supporters must face in a large country
like France although, at 200 kilometres, Lille is not far to travel to Reims as
it would be for other Ligue 1 teams like Nice and Marseilles; in fact it's almost a derby .
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| A dark picture but the stadium is opposite the port |
Sitting back on the boat later we
could hear the roar of the fans during the second half but could tell the two occasions when cheers were loud and long enough for a home goal so we guessed correctly
at the two nil result.
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