Today was Bastille day in France and we expected quite a bit of traffic in and around the city, so we planned for a 10am departure. I parked the car in the traffic circle with everyone else, which was just outside our hotel and made for easy loading of all the gear from the room, including Bitch which we thought would be too enticing for someone if left in the car. Once loaded and destination set in the GPS we made our way out of the city for what would be a long 8 hour drive to Stuttgart. Bitching Betty took us out the north way, which was far faster to get to the autoroute that rings the city than the way we came in. Surprisingly there was virtually no traffic anywhere and we made great time, except for a little detour we made because Bitching Betty got confused.

Our route included a stop at Épernay, which is a central town in Champagne region . JB provided this fabulous travel tip knowing that we would be traveling through this area...thanks again John! It was an interesting drive to get there. Initially from the autoroute running east it was just lots of flat land as far as we could see. Signs for Épernay and Champagne country started coming up, but we were thinking where are all the vineyards as there were none to be seen. We took the exit for Épernay and after a short time through flat farm land the road lead into a deeply forested area that went on for about 10km. All of a sudden we were through the forest and the road went sharply downhill and a massive valley stretched before us covered in vineyards as far as the eye could see.

A short drive later through a few small towns we entered Épernay and found Avenue de Champagne, which was where Moet & Chandon was located. We booked ourselves in for the next tour, which would be an hour later, and walked back the short 250m to the main traffic circle where we saw a bistro to relax . We noticed signs everywhere for the Tour De France as this was where one of the stage days started from a few days earlier. We had a beer and a coffee and then made our way back to Moet & Chandon for the tour. The tour was amazing. Our guide gave us a bit of a walk through of the main building where they maintained the offices of the founders in their original state going back to the 1700s. Then we watched a short movie and started the tour of the caves where the wine is kept and turns into champagne slowly over 2 1/2 years for the Imperial and 7 years for the Vintage grade. The Dom Perignon is kept for over 10 years and at times even longer. The vintage and Doms are turned by hand in the later stages every day...10's of thousands of them. As we heard this story I asked Connie if I should tell them that she puts sugar into her Dom Perignon. She didn't think that would be a good idea. We only covered a very small portion of the 28km of caves under the town of Épernay that Moet & Chandon has. Overall, there are over 150km of caves under the local region . The caves, because of the chalk content in the walls of rock, maintain the temperature at 10 degrees Celsius and at a even humidity year round, making it perfect for the production of champagne.

Once the tour was over we entered a small room where we got a flute of each of the white and rose Imperial champagnes. Connie didn't have any as she can't drink alcohol so she got the children's tour. After that we went into the store and picked up a couple of bottles to bring back to Hanno and Isa's to celebrate the success of my riding. By now we were getting pretty hungry as it was 2:30pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we went back to the bistro to eat. Connie stopped into patisserie across the street while we were waiting for our food to come and picked up a bunch of stuff she knew wasn't available in Stuttgart like macaroons. A short while later we were back in the car and were making our way towards Stuttgart again. At one point we made a little detour from the directions that Bitching Betty wanted us to take so that we could get into Germany quicker and onto the autobahn and make up some time. This time there wasn't much traffic in the way so I was able to get the Audi up to 215 before having to slow down. Being a diesel it has lots of torque in the low end, but not much top end so that was about it.

We made it back by 9pm and had a late meal with Hanno and Isa and drank our champagne, then called it a night.