DAY 2, Saturday SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

STAY:

Troyes 1 night, DUPLEX dans CENTRE VILLE (GARE;PARKING;WIFI) 19 Avenue Pierre Brossolette, 10000

SIGHTS:

Champagne region drive : Reims –Verzenay - Epernay –Avize, Le Mesnil-Sur-Oger –Vertus –Troyes

EPERNAY: Stroll along Avenue de Champagne, home to the Hotel de Ville and many villas belonging to rich wine merchants (Moët et Chandon, Perrier Jouet, Pol Roger, or Mercier). Known as the ‘World’s Most Expensive Avenue,’ thousands of bottles of the best champagne are kept in large cellars built below the grounds of Avenue de Champagne!

Visit to Château Perrier museum

European Heritage Days [Sep 17, 18... free museums, events]

European Heritage Days were back on September 17 and 18, 2022, for the 39th edition. In Paris and France, this is the occasion to visit for free museums, exceptional opening, exclusive guided tours and wonderful entertainments planned with a theme: "Sustainable Heritage".

We had free entries to all the places we visited on these 2 days

ROCKY START AS APARTMENT GUYS REFUSE TO SEND CODE EARLY

We started off our drive at 8 am after keydrop. We had requested our Troyes apt guys to send us the key box code the previous day or early in the morning that day or text the code to our phone. They refused on all counts.

It was a Saturday. The post offices which have free wifi close by 11 am or noon.

We tried to catch the free wifi in Epernay... could not.

DRIVING ROUTE THROUGH VILLAGES, NOT HIGHWAY

https://goo.gl/maps/6s6uhgxXMWQzVjwAA

We had prepared and stored daily drive routes on our phone as bookmarks. Clicked on this link when we started with the wifi in the hotel and connected the phone to the car. The car displayed our route on the screen and the GPS voice guided

Even without wifi, our offline map worked quite well.

OUR GOAL IN DRIVING THE ROUTE DU CHAMPAGNE AND THE RESULTANT DIFFICULTIES

Our goal was a scenic drive and enjoying picturesque villages.

We don't drink and did not want to pay the usual 80-120 euro per person entry to the wineries. We were hoping we'll be able to see the vineyards from the driving route and hopefully some artistic décor like this pic we saw in a site talking about Avize.

In Stellenbosch near Capetown, South africa, we had entered wineries, strolled near the vineyard, admired the décor with statues etc without booking any wine tasting. We would have bought olives, grapes or just grape juice if they sold any, but it was exclusively only wine.

There had been chocolate tasting in the area, we had done that and bought stuff we liked.

https://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2016/06/south-africa-trip-report-day-5-wine.html

In Germany we had walked through the vineyards in the Rhine valley and enjoyed fireworks at Boppard

Back to France road trip planning, We marked up some wine museums for paid entry.

we looked at the itinerary of tour companies who took people on the driving route of Route du champagne and then tastings at select wineries.

We copied that but they were doing it over 4 days what we were driving through in one day. Also they know where exactly to go when they say, enjoy the pretty village of Avize or Oger.

The google map did not give sights with camera icon as it had given for helping our Spain road trip earlier. Anyway, we drew up a route as best as we could and did drop a few villages like Hautvillers etc due to lack of time on the actual drive.

The drive had bucolic scenery as we passed through vineyards and villages instead of the highway. Considering the constraints we did enjoy some pretty sights.

The scenic Route du Champagne winds its way between plains, vineyards, forests and stretches to Ambonnay, then Bouzy famous for its red wines. In Louvois, a 17th century private chateau stands up in the middle of its park designed by Le Nôtre. The hilly road goes to Avenay-Val-d'Or and from there to Mutigny where the view onto Epernay and the surrounding villages is outstanding.

This section of the scenic Route du Champagne ends in Epernay, capital of Champagne wines. There is 100 kms of underground cellars where millions of bottles are lying. A whole world to be discovered!

YAY, a lovely champagne bottle towering in a field in Vrigny!

Advertisement for some champagne houses and a pretty sight for us.

Verzenay...

The vineyards consist almost exclusively of purely south-facing slopes on the Montagne de Reims, mostly with Pinot Noir. Thanks to these south-facing slopes, the vineyards of Bouzy, together with those of Aÿ and the neighbour Ambonnay, are the source of some of the most powerful Pinot Noir wines of Champagne.

passed Ambonnay.

BOUZY

At Bouzy [ha ha, funny name for a wine town]we had a nice time at the pretty square with the cockatoo statue and the church bells chiming 11

[Bouzy, with its south-facing vineyards, is one of a few Champagne villages with a strong tradition of also producing red wines. They are called Bouzy Rouge, but their appellation is Coteaux Champenois. About two-thirds of the Champagne producers in the village also sell Bouzy Rouge, but the total production is small, about 45 000 bottles in a good year. This is still a very significant portion of the total production of Coteaux Champenois, which is just about 100 000 bottles per year. However, rather than being bottles on its own, more of the red wines from Bouzy end up blended into rosé Champagnes]

We drove on , stopping at old churches and picturesque spots in villages.

Eglise Saint-Trésain à Avenay-Val-d'Or here

Mutigny

EPERNAY

Église Notre-Dame - Épernay

Avenue de Champagne

Beneath the streets of Épernay are great Champagne houses Moët et Chandon, Mercier, Boizel, De Venoge, De Castellane, Perrier Jouët, etc with a 110 km tunnel system of champagne cellars. More than 200 million champagne bottles are ripening here.

We parked the car in a free spot and strolled down the avenue.

Saw nice vintage cars at the courtyard of top chateaux

we visited Chateau Perrier museum, basically only archeological exhibits and it was a lovely chateau, but we didn't see anything related to wine/champagne

caves for storing champagne bottles, at a low constant temperature by nature

tourist road train

we would have loved to visit Moet Chandon and other famous champagne houses and a wine museum with some equipment, wine making details. Everything was free for Europe heritage day.

We were pressed for time, so moved on.

VILLAGE OGER

Le Mesnil-Sur-Oger...driving the Route touristique du champagne, we come across the Côte des Blancs where the finest wines of Champagne are produced. Adjacent to the town of Mesnil-sur-Oger, is the small village of Oger, considered one of the most picturesque villages of France, thanks to its ancient fountains, its abundance of flowers and its church dating to the 12th century

we had seen champagne bottle and flute figures in Avize site, were very happy to see a similar one in a round about

L'église Saint-Memmie de Bergères-les-Vertus / SAINT MEMMIE'S CHURCH

wedding party at a church

We reached Troyes, parked in the huge free parking ground across the street from our apt. We walked to the nearby Ibis to request to use their wifi , for pay. There was unlocked wifi in their lobby and we used it to access our email.

IBIS LOBBY

The apt had emailed the code at 1.30pm.

We walked back to our apt and got our key from the dropbox outside. There were 2 flights of stairs, the 2nd one small and steep.

We came down, went to our car, took what we needed for just the night and the next morning.

There was nobody on the grounds. We backed the car near another car so that the boot was not accessible.

WILD LAVENDER

Lots Of lavender growing wild there. I plucked some and stored in my pocket. Awesome fragrance.

TROYES APARTMENT

we read up this paper of instructions written in French on this table with the help of google translate app in the phone. ... to leave the kitchen clean, take out trash and make the bed!

We went up,

The big window was boarded up with just an inch open as can be seen in the pic below. Fortunately the fan ventilated the place and cleared the musty smell when we switched it on.