France: Dreaded Grève

Still not yet adjusted to sticker shock of French trains, we have been mostly taking TERs (regionals) around. Going from Reims to Nancy, we had booked ourselves two TERs connecting in Chalons-en-Champagne. The night before as we were preparing for bed, I happened to double-check the train times and noticed that one of the two trains was canceled. We had known about the Grève (train strike) that was taking place that day. We were not prepared for the Grève to extend a second day.

Instead of going to bed, we had to come up to speed on the much too often occurrence of Greve. For trains, we found this link to be particularly useful. If only there is a place for me to sign up for transportation strike notifications!

Long story short: after much aggravation, we eventually arrived in Nancy 12 hours behind schedule. We had a bonus visit to Chalons - which at the time we didn't know was to be the beginning of our tour of water towns of France - while the very kind tourist office stored our bags for free.

On the train from Reims to Châlons-en-Champagne.


In addition to holding our bags for free, the Chalons tourist office gave us a city map with sites marked. We were a bit surprised to see the city decorated for Halloween, including a big spider web (with spider) on the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) .






Around town there were many posters for the 10th Annual International Film Festival that we missed by a week. But still cool to see the John and Yoko poster.


The Art Nouveau "A Figaro" building and and Art Deco office building(?).




The Cathedral was cool but the 12th-century Church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, with UNESCO World Heritage status, had some excellent stained glass, an elegant interior, and an imposing exterior; all mostly unchanged for 1000 years.










The Cathedral is just off a canal that connects to the Marne River.






Our train to Nancy was 2 hours late, but NOT cancelled. Woohoo!