France/Spain Vacation- Part I- The French Wedding

The entire purpose to this whole trip was to visit France for Alex's friend's wedding. Laure was Alex's freshman room-mate in San Francisco and they have kept in close touch all this time. It was quite the debacle getting to Reims. The flight was fine (we barely made each flight so it involved lots of running), but catching the train to Reims proved to be a feat. For some reason, the only way to get your ticket that you pre-purchased is to have it printed, and they require the credit card you charged to be swiped before anyone can print it. For some reason the machine would not recognize the card that was used and they (in very broken english) pointed to different numbers on our receipt saying these numbers were the correct credit card (often the number wouldnt even have enough digits). Frustrated, this delay made us miss our train. They had no work-around without a "valid" credit card. So they eagerly sold us another ticket to a a station that was not Reims for twice the price and 3 hours later. So we had 3 hours to complain about some sort of refund of our original ticket. We scribbled our info on random paper, they yelled at us in french, we yelled back in english...who knows what will result. So we trained to Not-Reims and had to catch another train into Reims. All this was 5 hours of arguing and traveling for a 45 minute trip total. ouch. Not a promising start. Our hotel in Reims was quaint and had construction going on in the inside. The rooms smelled like smoke, and after 2 days of searching for electric converters, the sockets ended up frying anything electric we plugged in, including Alex's hair straightener.

However, things turned quickly around. Without anytime to rest, we headed out that afternoon to meet with Laure, Michael, and the whole family for a "picnic." This equated to bread, wine, and cheese in the reception hall (as it was freezing out). French food is amazing. The bad part about going to Spain after was that the food seemed so bad in comparison. Even our hotel continental breakfast was amazing.

Laure's family was extremely kind, although the language barrier was pretty tall. Laure's family spoke some Engligh, but Michael's family spoke none, so every conversation involved both, with neither party understanding only half the things going on.

After helping set up, and imbibing in french cuisine, we collapsed in bed seeing how we'd gone almost 48 hours without proper rest.

The next day Michael had reserved us a tour of the champagne company he works for(Mumm), which was really interesting. Mumm also was providing all the champagne for the wedding (nice boss).





Right after the tour was the wedding. It started with the legal marriage at city hall. The whole wedding party goes and its a big event (with the french official all dressed up in a french flag sash).







Next we headed to the religious wedding part. The church was freeeeezing cold...not the most fun, especially when you don't understand what anyone is saying.






Last was the reception and party. There was amazing food, great wine, and dancing until 4am.



The next day, we had wine visited the church that the French Kings get married in and leftovers for breakfast with Laure's family afterwards.






After cleaning up the reception hall, we headed to Laure's family's house outside of Paris to get ready for our flight the next morning. Just before leaving for the flight Alex, Solange (nanny of Laure growing up on Reunion island), and I went for a walk. We saw a burned out car with French policemen smoking nearby on the side of a country road beside a large field. I took a picture (see Hobson predisposition for taking pictures of broken down cars.). The police got out of the van and started yelling at me. Luckily Solange was there to talk French , because the Police didnt seem to understand when I just kept repeating "I dont speak french" (in french of course). I guess it was a crime scene (unprotected and unlabeled) and they were going to arrest me (I can't really imagine what for...perhaps they thought I had pictures of them smoking and slacking off at the scene). Luckily Solange convinced them I wasnt the criminal mastermind coming back to the scene to take pictures of my handiwork while cops sat there...smart. As you can see in this picture there's a door opening on the left hand side....thats the police coming to get me.



With minutes left to spare in France, we headed to the Airport for the next part of our adventure...Sevilla.