91. Champagne. Bar Sur Aube

We are spending a week in the south of the Champagne region of France at a strange town called Bar Sur Aube.    

We have a great apartment, right in the centre of town.  In fact, it is so central it is directly opposite the Hotel De Ville (the town hall) and it's adjacent Marie (council offices).  

Here they are!  A long time ago the Marie was a convent.

Despite advertising that the apartment had wifi, it didn't!  Apparently " le wire was cut in la renovatee-on, but I have applied many months ago to 'ave it feexed!"  Hughes was so nice, we forgave him his cut wire and resorted, yet again, to lugging our computer to a cafe.

There is the Cafe du Commerce (building with 5 glass panel doors and a wider footpath for tables for the weekend rush!)  This photo was taken from our balcony at about 3pm.  Busy town, yes?

Here is Paul on our balcony accessing the wifi of Cafe du Commerce.  They had a 26 digit password which we have entered about 50 times in the space of this week.  It is a very good thing we have mild, autum weather.

The apartment has been recently renovated with all mod cons.  And the owner and his wife were just lovely.  

As it turned out, this is not a pretty town.  But it is well positioned to visit a variety of champagne vineyards.

Bar-sur-Aube

There are so many burnt out and un-repaired old buildings that Paul has concluded there is either a pyromaniac on the loose,  or no-one was insured (and therefore can't afford to rebuild).

This is a very well maintained building for its age, but it is not a style that is pretty.  However, it is very much a style of northern France and I would expect that it has a lot in common with buildings in Belgium, Holland and Germany, although I have not been to those places.

There were a few surprises though - this is a beautiful old water mill on the Aube river.  And when we took 4 days of bread scraps to feed the ducks, we created a feeding frenzy.
  

We had 30 ducks churning up the Aube to eat delicious (albeit stale) French bread.

And just when you think the watermill was the only nice house in town - up pops this beauty on the banks of the river.  Just gorgeous!

Next - Renoir's town - Essoyes.