Europe & Dubai

Had an interesting torturing time trying to decide what Champagne to bring home...

Did tours of both Moet & Chandon as well as Mercier - both incidentally owned by the same Moet conglomerate, along with Mumm, Pommery, Dom Perrignon, Louis Vitton (surprised!) and several others... it seems its bigger business than we originally thought!

There are over 100kms of underground tunnels under the streets of Epernay. They are all pretty much joined together underground by the conglomerate that owns all the big labels. So we decided to bring home some of the small family (hopefully) owned stuff to try out.

Could go on for hours about what we learned about the business and politics of Champagne and the agencies that run it, but wont bore you with it unless you want to know more...

Pictured is Mercier's large 120,000 bottle sized barrel which he made for the 1889 Paris Exhibition which took over 30 years to make! And an incredible effort to transport to Paris before they had to purchase houses in the city to bulldoze to get it into the exhibition centre! It came second only to the Eiffel Tower!

I am the small object to its left!

We did a walking tour of interesting history of Strasborg inbetween washing cloths at laundrette (not recommended). Interesting mix of Roman, French and Germany ownership as well as independence! Has quite a unique feeling to it. Somewhat quite unlike the rest of France culturally speaking. Although still quite present in many newer buildings.

Amazing cathedral built in 1498 - see pic

Also has the world's largest Astronomical clock. We saw the miniture copy of this in the Sydney's Powerhouse Museum a few months ago when we were there. The original is so much more spectacular!

Fabulous canals around the whole town, and remnants of the walled city.

From there we travelled west straight to the heart of the Champagne country - Epernay...

Left after a pleasant night staying at Lindau on the Bodense River on the southern tip of Germany. Over the other side of the lake was Austrian and Swiss Alps. As we chose to drive through Switzerland, we had to purchase a years worth of driving permit for the highways of Switzerland for just one day! So 40SF.

Had a gorgeous lunch at Aqua in gay Zurich on the lake. With a bunch of bankers and sunnies, we sought the shade of an umbrella as it was so hot!!!

From Zurich we moved along the supposed loveliest drive from Mulhouse to Strasborg, which was really tame after the Austrian alps! Also passed a huge nuclear power plant right on the Rhine River (the best roads in France are situated along this stretch of road!!!)

We ended up in gorgeous Strasborg.

The boat show was amazing. There must have been over 1000 boats from a 9.5m classic sailing boat to a 3 storey smegaplex stinker with about 5 radars on the roof. Most contained the obligatory hydraulic extension and lifting ladder that protrudes from the rear of the boat. Thus enabling the occupants to simply step of the back of the boat to the jetty. And to say that the stands to sell these monsters was elaborate, was an understatement! It looked like that had just about extended the yacht club buildings with two storey makeshift showrooms come get-them-pissed-and-they’ll-sign-up-and-buy-one lounges. The Italian boat builders obviously had to import amazing Italian designer furniture for theirs so they stood out from the crowd, which they certainly did!

From Cannes we did a quick hop along the coast to Nice. The traffic again was amazing, and we couldn’t find any camping grounds around, so decided to keep going to Monaco and see how we go there! Arrived early evening, so we found outselves parked out the front of the ritzy Yacht Club Monaco. There just happened to be a Classic Yacht display on, and no security to the marina so we could wander around admiring the boats. We then stumbled over the largest one there, America. Turns out they were looking for crew for racing over the next few days and invited us to join them at 11am the next morning.

Left Tulon and headed along the coastal road to San Tropez. The traffic was amazing. Windy roads, amazing views over beautifully coloured water, but strangly no better than say Quindalup, just different, and much more traffic. I guess the only difference is the size of the boats. They were just enormous the further east we went!

From San Tropez we continued along the windy roads to Cannes (pronounced Cairn – as in Cairns without the “s”). Stumbled across the Cannes Boat Show starting the very next day – decided to overnight and go the next day.