Day 1-2 – Aug 12-13, 2019 Drive from Paris to Zurich, CH

Faithful followers of our blog would notice that this trip to France is only less than 3 days apart from our last trip to Germany & Eastern Europe and wonder why we even bothered to come back home at all.  The answer is we did not go home.  We finished our Eastern Europe trip and got back to Vancouver on Fri Aug 9.  We stayed in Vancouver in order to attend the wedding of the son of one of our best friends there.  We did laundry and rested for two days before turning around to fly back to Europe again on Mon Aug 12.  This time, we flew to Paris and did a driving tour of the whole France by car.  It is really not enough time to do the whole loop in 12 days but c'est la vie!  Here is our route map for the next 12 days.

We originally planned to fly to Paris CDG via Chicago ORD.  On Sunday night, they were forecasting severe thunderstorm activity in ORD on Monday and we were offered a choice to stay with the original plan or to reroute via San Francisco SFO.  The SFO route would add 5 more hours to our itinerary and we had to fly out at 6a instead of 11a.  We chose the safer route and picked SFO to make sure we would not be delayed.  This turned out to be a very good decision as this change allowed us to upgrade all the way to United Polar Business class at no additional cost!  This was a huge and unexpected surprise.  We thoroughly enjoyed the long layover by fully utilizing the new Polar Business Lounge in SFO.  It offered sit down restaurant style meals with a menu and we found the food very good.  We got a good sleep on our flight and landed well rested for the long drive ahead.  We first drove to Reims to admire its magnificent Notre-Dame Cathedral before driving to Colmar which has a pretty town center.  We reached the Swiss city Zurich by the end of our first day.

First day: Paris to Reims to Colmar to Zurich

Travel in style:  United Polar Business Class

Dessert tray

CDG - Charles de Gaulle airport.  All the escalator tubes make the place look like a maze

Reims - most well known for its amazing and majestic cathedral and home of the famous champagne wine

The cathedral is called Notre-Dame de Reims and was built in 1275

Amazingly detailed stone carvings above the side entrance

The imposing and beautiful side entrance of the cathedral (where is Yiling?)

Each statue on the exterior wall tells a different story

The Final Judgement

Unbelievably detailed stone carvings adorn the exterior wall

The front facade is even more grand.  Gallery of Kings decorates the top tier above the center rose window

The nave facing the main entrance

North aisle

Reims is a major production center of champagne which ages in many caves under the city

Like the Paris Notre-Dame church, this cathedral also suffered two devastating fires in its history. 1481 by negligent workers  (sounds familiar?) and 1914 by shelling from German troops

The last destruction was fully restored by 1938 thanks to donations from rich folks like the Rockefellers

Colmar's hold to fame: "La Petite Venice"

It is so beautiful that it almost looks like it was photoshopped

Colmar has a well preserved old town

We came across several Michelin star restaurants in Colmar

If you think the house style looks German, you are right since Colmar is very close to German border separated by Rhine River

Colmar and the Alsace region had changed hands between French and German many times in the last 150 years

Colmar is connected to Rhine River in the east by this canal