Reims Shopping

Between Place Royale and Place Aristide-Briand, the sweetshop Deléans is installed in a decor of century-old wood panelling and mouldings. All the produce by Vincent Frodefond, a master craft chocolate maker, is homemade, including the chocolate moulds. Apart from the truffles with old champagne grape marc spirit and the many varieties of old-fashioned caramels, you should try the péché du diable, a ganache with blood orange pulp pepped up with a discreet dash of ginger.

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Have to share the fun art that my friends bought and the creations that we made with them. Bonnie and Keith bought this funny little Rooster which we combined with our lunchtime beverage to make "Chicken 'n Beer". Brian and Jeroen bought the cute donkies and since we were in Champagne.....well, it was only natural to create "Donkies and Champagne".

the architecture is interesting as well as the stuff they sell.

The shop was buiilt into an old warehouse and it has kept items of the former function.

What to buy: their own clothes lines Avantpremiere for young girls and Briefing for women.

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If you're in Reims during the Christmas Shopping season, be sure to check out the Village de Noel. Outdoor stalls feature local crafts and food. We enjoyed browsing almost all the stalls and sampling the food.

What to buy: Crafts, jewelry, ornaments, art, snacks, sweets and of course Cheese!

What to pay: Depends on how badly the dollar's doing...

There is a large internet cafe in downtown Reims where you can send email and faxes home. Clique et Croque is located at 27, Rue de Vesle (this street is actually an alleyway called "Passage du Commerce").

The shop is very large and has tons of computers. At any given time, about half the computers were taken by local teenagers playing online games, but there are always plenty of monitors available for email. The computers come with European keyboards, but they do have a couple of American keyboards behind the computer if you ask for them.

The prices here are very reasonable (much less expensive than Paris!). I often paid less than a euro for my time. The cafe also has food available, from croque monsieur sandwiches to Snickers bars. The people behind the counter spoke enough English to understand my questions and were very polite.

The cafe is open from 7:30am to 7:30pm.

One of LAFAYETTE'S shop-windows offered a very special and nice attraction: a DANCER!

As you can see the window was partly covered with cardboard but while dancing the dancer could remove pieces of cardboard, one after another till we all could see him in the end.

The floor was covered with the finest of white sand and while dancing he used the streams of sand that came from above....

He really was a very gifted dancer and we, the people watching him, enjoyed it very much.
I still can see myself reflected in the window.....

We could hear the music he danced on and in the end the applause was very enthousiastic and showed appreciation and he thanked us for that, standing there in the shop window!

Never ever seen such a thing.......this was an extra on my last they in Reims.....

This is a GRANDIOSE DEPARTMENT STORE, where is it great goofing around, expecially on a rainy day....

I took this pgotograph because this LAFAYETTE is still housed in the original building and on top I discovered the words : "MAGASINS MODERNES", lovely in the late afternoon sunshine!

There was something more that attracted my attention: see next tip.....

Arriving home after my The Netherlands - Germany - France - Belgium - The Netherlands trip the circle was closed......

It was good to be home again and I found a nice packet of REAL INDIAN TEA, my favourite BRAND: ORANGE PEKOE........

A VT friend from INDIA, travelling Europe, had missed me but had left this TEA here for me to enjoy......which was a very sweet gesture, much appreciated by me........and 500 gramms: I can enjoy this day after day after day for quite some time...........