Laon
Reims was going to be my seventh and last city in France to visit. By then, I gained some experience and developed a certain strategy for exploring new places. When the train rolls into a city I, first of all, try to determine on which side of it the city center is. In Europe, this is easy. Just look where church spires are the thickest and go in this direction.
A city map always comes handy. Free maps can be available at the train station. If not, I look around for a tourist information center. If it is not located nearby I simply walk into any hotel and ask for a map which is usually provided.
The train from Laon arrived around 6 pm. Ibis was the closest hotel to the station. A single room was $89. I did not like the hotel, got a map from the receptionist and kept going. The Golden Tulip charged $110 for a room. It was not in my price range and the hotel was on a noisy street. With the backpack, I walked until I founded a hotel exactly to my taste. Azur was on a quiet pedestrian street, in an old house, with no more than a dozen rooms. My room was on the top floor as usual, $79 per night, the window opened into a cozy courtyard.
By the time I settled in the room it became too late and dark for sightseeing. A few pieces of fried chicken that I had in Laon took the edge of my hunger but did not satisfy it. Besides, that was hours ago and I set off in search of a nice café. I was not in the mood for a long dinner in a restaurant but rather wanted a quick bite. A place that served bagels with various fillings looked good. I got myself a bagel that naturally came with a napkin.
A napkin is just a napkin. Who studies what’s on it, right? Without much thinking, I used mine for its intended purpose, i.e. applied it to my lips, then my eye caught a picture on the napkin. Queen Elizabeth smiled coyly at me with the caption KISS ME! I unfolded the napkin. Its other half had a photo of the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. He also wanted a kiss. I could understand why the Queen was on the napkin, but why Berlusconi who resigned in 2011?
At 9 pm, I finished my bagel and walked towards the hotel or rather in the direction where I thought it was and I could not find it. I did not get lost in French cities since the beginning of this trip which made me overconfident about my ability to navigate. My map was useless because I did not memorize the name of the street where Azur was. I could not pinpoint my current location on the map either. One moment I knew where I was, the next moment my brain was wiped out clean. The night was falling; I paid for a room somewhere in Reims and was unable to get to it. Then I had an idea. If I returned to the train station than I probably could retrace my route from there to the hotel.
I started to ask passers-by about the way to the station. A young woman pretended that she did not hear me and quickened her pace. A gray-haired gentleman walked past me too, then stopped and turned back. He only spoke French. I repeated my request about directions to the gare. He understood and showed me which way to go.
While I was walking in that direction I spotted a door with wrought iron details that I photographed earlier in the evening. I recalled that the door was on the left from me when I searched for a hotel. I kept going and recognized more buildings. Using them as “breadcrumbs”, street by street, I finally came to Azur which simply was an old residential house converted into a hotel. The front door was locked. I keyed in the code that the receptionist wrote down for me on a scrap of paper and that I was so afraid to lose, climbed the stairs to the last floor and gave out a sigh of relief. I made it to my room.
I already decided to spend the entire following day in Reims and paid for two nights in advance. From Reims, I wanted to go to Luxembourg. The next two days were going to be the rail strike again. So the question was how to get to Luxembourg? I called home in Colorado, reported the daily activities to my husband as usual and asked him what to do.
In his opinion, I had to go via Paris because the Paris trains were running during the strike. I absolutely refused to do that. Paris and Luxembourg were in the opposite directions. It would be wasteful in every aspect – my time, money and energy – to travel like that. So far I successfully avoided going via Paris and hoped that to do the same on the leg to Luxembourg, my last one in France. Once I was out of this country I’d not be affected by the strike anymore. But how to get out of France?
My husband told me that there were two train stations in Reims. One was the old station that I arrived to from Laon and the other was recently built specifically for high-speed TGV trains. The new station was located in Champagne-Ardenne which is, strictly speaking, not Reims, but a different city. It was possible that TGV trains ran, despite the strike.
He also suggested having a stopover in Metz, the city in the direction of Luxembourg and worth a visit. I looked online for possible routes via Metz and found a bus from Paris that passed through Reims at 9 am. There was a connecting bus from Metz to Luxembourg in the afternoon. The buses were a lot cheaper and slower than the direct TGV train that departed at 9.22 am.
My poor brain was overloaded with all that information and unable to make a decision. Things always look clearer in the morning; I threw the issue out of my mind and went to bed.