From Champagne to Paris to Barcelona in 24 hours!

Dunkers for my Champange

After our visit to the French open we hopped on the high speed train to Reims, in less than an hour later we jumped off the train and headed to our hotel.  Reims is a super cute little town with a great square and of course the token Notre Dame cathedral.  An extraordinary amount of WWII went down in Reims including the surrender of Nazi Germany in a small school across from our hotel.  There we visited the map room where Eisenhower planned many battles (the original maps are still on the wall) we saw the actual place where WWII came to a close.  As we wandered through the town in and out of amazingly restored buildings with great Art Deco architecture.  We also spent a few hours at the Mum champagne tour learning how champagne is made, and of course the difference between champagne and sparkling wine. 

On Wednesday we headed back to Paris and waded through the crowds of the Louve so that we could see with our very own eyes the La Joconde aka the Mona Lisa.  The Virgin and Child hall was pretty overwhelming with 100s of pictures of the Virgin Mary and naked chubby babies, the Mona Lisa was pretty creepy with her eyes never coming off of us as we moved around the room

Mona Photo Bombing Us

even though there were 1000s of tourist paparazzi snapping her picture, and the Winged Victory was gorgeous!!! That evening we met some of Sankat’s classmates for a quick supper before we grabbed our night train to Barcelona. 

The Front Yard our Barcelona Hotel!!!

After a uneventful evening train at the border changeover we meet a family of five on their European vacation, we thought they were pretty hardcore traveling across Europe on trains and such with three kids!!! We arrived in Barcelona to a bright and sunshiny day were we made our way through the narrow streets, shopping, eating tapas, drinking sangria, and buying espadrilles.  Today after spending the morning at the laundry mat (clearly our Spanish/Catalan/Gujarati is not the best, and yes Sankat’s language is the default after trying Spanish and almost everyone in stores speaks it, crazy huh?) we headed to the Picasso museum which is in an old castle where each small room reveals another stage in his life through text and art.  Pretty impressive place.  

Who knows what Barcelona will have in store for us over the next few days!!!