Town Centre and nightlife
The centre of Reims is concentrated along the Place d'Erlon, a pedestrianised street with other shopping streets off of it. In typical French fashion, it's not completely pedestrianised and you have to watch your step: outside the Theatre it is open to buses, and a roundabout inexplicably runs around the Angel statue at the bottom of the Place. The Erlon is a great place for shopping; you can find anything here.Reims nightlife (at least, my experience of it) is also centred on the Erlon. There are plenty of good restaurants, mainly quite expensive but still far cheaper than the UK, and plenty of bars. Irish bars still seem to be the In Thing, with the Gluepot and the Blackface. My personal favourite is the Blackface; a supposedly traditional Irish pub which sells Kilkenny in normal pint glasses, but also pizza and Black Russians. There are clubs, but they're expensive so I haven't been to any.
Champagne
Last time I was in Reims I woke up in the early afternoon after a heavy night in the Blackface and my friends and I decided to go and see a cave de champagne. We went round the Mumm cave - it's absolutely fascinating to see how much hard work goes into producing champagne - and how much of it is still done by hand. We got a free glass of champagne (probably not such a good idea, since we'd had nothing to eat but a pain au chocolat all day) then Alice, Laura and I all bought some champagne in the shop. We're tourists, okay?! You could probably Mumm cheaper in a French supermarket, but it's nice to have a souvenir of somewhere you've been, and watched being made, and it was still half the price we'd have paid in England.
Cathedrale de Notre Dame
When approaching the cathedral from the front, along the rue Libergier, you become aware that whilst aligning the street with the cathedral was a nice piece of city planning, it makes it impossible to get a good photo without the risk of being run over. From a distance, it is as huge and impressive as a thirteenth-Century cathedral should be. But close up, the building starts to take itself less seriously. A lot of the statues of angels are giggling uncontrollably, and there is one especially charming one just beside the entrance, hiding her laugh behind her hand. The town is full of postcards of her, and she even appears on Reims' current city logo.Inside, the cathedral is magical. It is famous for its stained glass, of which there is an enormous variety including some pieces by Marc Chagall showing the champagne process. Somehow, among all this splendour, it is easy to imagine the medieval kings of France being crowned here.
