Our room in the Bristol Hotel in Place Drout d’Erlon the main street is located in the main eating and entertainment part of Reims. It’s an old style hotel with a cage style lift that only holds 2 people (or 1 person with a bag). It has been updated, but retains the metal gates on each floor.We spent the first half of the day exploring Reims on foot, just soaking in the ambience and the shopping. In many of the cities that we’ve visited in Europe, what we find interesting is that, if buildings are fully of partially or completely destroyed, they are rebuilt in the same way, using the same materials and techniques as the original. This maintains the overall architectural, visual and cultural integrity of the area and its links with the past.
In the afternoon we took a tour of the G.H.Mumm house of Champagne. It has positioned itself as a supporter of extreme sports, including Formula 1 racing, and sells approximately 18 million bottles a year which is only about 1% of the total output from Champagne per year – that’s a lot of wine. The presentation was very slick and professional but covered all aspects of the wine production and its history. 
We traveled through the chalky caves, 14 metres underground and saw the bottle storage and some historic vintages dating back to 1825, kept more for historic than commercial reasons. The tasting was interesting, limited to the tour chosen (and paid for), but we found both the brut and grand cuve less than impressive. Our favourite was Pommery that we had with dinner at La Lorainne that night. That incidentally consisted of grilled salmon with a hollandaise sauce for Frances and an osso bucco Milanese for me – both delicious.
Place Drouet d’Erlon is populated by restaurants, cafes, bars, brasseries and snackeries. Most have tables and chairs within the Place, and there is no other seating – either eat and/or drink, or suffer the pain of standing. The hours they open depend on their clientele. This also determines the time the tables and chairs are dragged out of the establishments. Some leave the tables and chairs out overnight and use some system to discourage theft or vandalism. It’s all about effort and risk management. The stony paved road ensures that there is a constant clatter from around 7am to 11am as they open and set up. All tastes are catered for - in addition to ‘traditional’ French cuisine, there’s the Sherlock Holmes English Pub with the waiters in Scottish kilts, the Quick hamburger bar, the Istanbul, the Tokyo Japanese restaurant, etc
In the morning the table umbrellas are raised to deal with the sun as it creeps over the buildings. Because of the long days, with daylight form 5:45 am to 9:30 pm, by the time people are ready to take the weight off their legs, the sun is quite high.
No-one really starts serious eating until midday, and by then everything is ready for the onslaught. Peak hour continues to about 2pm when it slows down but there are always people who need sustenance and a seat. The noise changes from the clatter of setup to the chatter of people enjoying their time out. A little while later the afternoon breeze starts, so it’s a battle between keeping the umbrellas erect and people being injured as they fall over. Slowly as the sun moves lower in the sky, umbrellas are folded or unfolded depending on the sunny side of the street, or to provide a cohesive look to the establishment’s tables.The evening peak starts around 7pm and goes for a couple of hours, until the sky begins to darken to a deep blue and the lights take over. The chatters continues, but is broken every now and then by the shattering of crockery or glasses. The hard cobbled street ensures that the waiters and waitresses have a permanently uneven footing and that anything that falls from even a small height will crash with the maximum sound effect.
By 9:30 the table and chair dragging begins in the early closing eateries, leaving mainly the bars and brasseries open. The noise of the table folding, dragging and general clatter subsides by around 11pm, leaving only the late-nighters still operating.
