Hopabilly by 't Hofbrouwerijke - #OTTBeerDiary Day 277

This post is a part of the 2015 New Beer Every Day Beer Diary Challenge, #ottbeerdiary. Over the course of 2015, I will be trying a new beer every day. Please read the background in the link above, and enjoy reading about the most recently tasted beers below. If you’d like to join the challenge as well, let me know in the comments below, and be sure to check out Grown-up Travel Guide and his #grownupbeerdiary, where Andy Higgs came up with the diary format in use below. You can catch up on all of our posts as part of the challenge under the tag ottbeerdiary.

Day 277: October 4, 2015

Diary entry:

Back on July 4, I managed to get rid of a twenty-five-year-old monkey off my back when I finally got to see the changing of the guard in London.

Today, Erin and I removed another monkey off of our collective backs as we finally managed to visit Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris today. I had visited before on my first visit to Paris in 2004, but when Erin first visited Paris with me in 2008, we made it to almost all of the sights we wanted to see, but we had to get on the road and couldn’t squeeze in a visit to Notre Dame that time. On our many visits back to Paris since then, we’ve still never managed to squeeze in a visit to the cathedral until today.

And not only did we manage to arrive with no line whatsoever to get in, Mass was being held as well, so we got to have that added experience!

Since we were off on our day of firsts, we decided to add another first on our drive home, and took a detour over to Epernay to visit the Champagne wine region of France, which neither of us have ever visited before.

Epernay is a charming town, and the Avenue de Champagne with the mansions of the Champagne houses lining the street is very impressive. We will definitely be making a return visit at some point soon to explore (and taste) properly.

View this post on Instagram

We were in Paris for the weekend, and decided to take an alternate route home, heading east to Epernay, France, the capital of the Champagne region. This was our first time ever stopping in the region, and we were quite sad we couldn't stay longer! We'll definitely be making a return visit at some point in the future, with an overnight. Here's a shot of Dom Perignon, the monk who came up with the Chanpagne method of sparkling wine production, at the Moët and Chandon facility at the start of the Avenue de Champagne.

A post shared by Brett Domue (@metsbwd) on Oct 5, 2015 at 11:56pm PDT

But we had a four-and-a-half hour drive to make still, and decided to let discretion take charge, and returned to the Netherlands without any visits to the houses on this trip.