Champagne and Our Best Meal

We were up quite early today to get to the pick up point for our bus tour to Reims and Epernay in the Champagne region. We went on one of the double deck touring buses which was a first for us. It was a pleasant ride through the French countryside to Riems and our visit to Mumm (pronounced "Moom", who knew?)Cellars. We had an informative tour that showed us the  caves and the champagne making process. Then we had our first champagne tasting. 

Here are some shots from the caves.

Some of the bottles of champagne are kept for 6 or 7 years before they are sold. 

This was a display in the Mumm cave. 

After the caves, we were set loose in Reims and chose to go on a tour of the Reims cathedral. It was largely destroyed in the first world war and has been rebuilt a number of times. It has some amazing features that were different from other cathedrals we've seen.

This is the apparently famous statue of the smiling angel. 

Most of the original stained glass was destroyed in the world wars. This is one section that was not destroyed. 

This section was redone when Germany and France came together years after the second world war to pledge friendship. 

This section was designed by famed French artist Marc Chagall. 

Next, we drove to Epernay to visit the Moet and Chandon caves. The presentation there was a bit more modern but the information was very similar to Mumm. 
These are bottles of Dom Perignon. We had one of these when we retired so it was interesting to learn about exactly how it's made. 

This was our favourite part of the tour. And Moet poured bigger samples!

This is Dom. He's the monk who spent 47 years perfecting the method of making champagne!

Ok, now on to our best meal in Paris. I had read about a small restaurant called Fish la Boissonnerie before we came. It was apparently very hard to get a table but some people had written that they showed up when it opened and got seated. After our tour today we walked to the restaurant which is in the St. Germain des Pres area. This is close to our hotel. We walked into the restaurant when it opened at 7 and got a seat! The hostess said that they usually save a table for walk ins. It was an amazing experience for a very reasonable price. The servers would walk across the narrow street to a bakery to get freshly baked focaccia for the tables. We were used to French servers but everyone here spoke English which made the meal stress free. We are hoping to try to recreate some of the dishes we had tonight.
This is the restaurant and you can see it's quite small.

Interestingly, the kitchen is upstairs and food is sent down in a dumb waiter.

Marilyn's starter was buffalo mozzarella with sweet corn and figs. 

My starter was gaspacho with cheese and basil sorbet. I'd love to make this at home. 

Marilyn's main was grilled salmon with pasta risotto and shaved fennel. Somehow, the photo of my main, grilled duck breast, didn't work. I use my phone for dinner pics and occasionally it doesn't take the picture. Picture or not, it was excellent. 

On the way home we stopped at a chocolate shop since we didn't have dessert with the meal. We picked up a few items and ended up finishing our day with assorted macarons and a nice Sancerre wine.
Here are some of the macarons that we had to choose from.

Chocolate shoes??

A chocolate Porsche for me!