Champagne Region, Reims
 

Looking to go on a day trip while in Paris in October. Heard good things about the wine tasting in Reims and was wondering what people thought of this area and what else there is to do there.

Nice town. There is a cathedral that is one of the highlites of any visit. Visitors bureau next door, some good stores selling champagne across the street. I went to the Taitinger cellars, which are in the town itself. The cellars are built in the crypts of a demolished abbey. Neat, good tour, good tasting afterwards. There are also some Roman ruins, the city hall is worth looking at, there is a pedestrian street with restaurants. We wlaked form the train station to the Cathedral (5-10 mins) then walked to pedestrian street (5-10 mins) then to cellars (~20 minutes) then had them call a cab to go back to the train station. We were there for a dat yrip, if I was going to go again I would have researched a bit more to see more of the town. We went by train from Paris, in January. Interesting scenery, would have been better in growing months.

Hope this helps,

Mike

I just did a day trip to Reims 2 weeks ago. The train ride is only about 1.5 hours from Paris.

The walk to the cathedral or visitor bureau is easy, and there are several champagne houses that do not require reservations.

We arrived in Reims at around 10:30 and walked to the cathedral. The walk was easy and there were many shops along the way. Unfortunately we were there on some sort of holiday, so most of the shops were not open. We visited the cathedral, which was beautiful.

I had planned to visit both Taittinger and Piper Heisieck since neither required prior reservations and I didn't really want to keep to a regimented schedule. By the time we were done at the cathedral, both cellars were closed for lunch and would not reopen for a couple of hours.

In order to catch the train I wanted back to Paris, we ended up only having time to visit Taittinger, but it was a good tour with a good tasting, as mentioned previously.

bookmarking..excellent info.

Thing is, you need to go to Epernay too and you need a car for that.

But you want to pace yourself as far as tastings go so maybe not the best thing to do in one day.

Might mean an overnight trip.