In Champagne

Note on the last photo: at 183 centimeters, Itka is a tall girl, but she's not that tall. The bottle at her feet is a small 37.5 centiliter one. I threw it into the shopping cart with the toothpaste and oranges at the grocery store. It happens to be Henri de Verlaine, one of the best Champagnes you'll ever taste.

You know you are in France when you're Impulse-shooping for Champagne. We are in Epernay, completely surrounded by the Champagne vinyards. Champagne is like water here. You can literally drink it for free by visiting the wineries. We're doing a lot of that, researching for a travel article on the region before hitting the big city. There we'll probably have to settle on equally inexpensive red wine from the Rhone, Burgundy or Bordeaux. Such a bitch life is.