There is a passage in the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that reads something like this:
Arthur Dent: “It’s times like this I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was younger.”
Ford Prefect: “ What did your mother tell you?”
Dent: “I don’t know, I never listened”.
Contrary to every piece of advice we have ever received, we stopped in Reims, in the port, in the centre of town. That would be the one that has been described variously as “opposite the freeway, beside the bridge and under the elevated freeway with it’s population of some sort of lesser beings”, or “ a bit noisy”.
It was raining when we arrived, quite without relent and we’d already travelled a not very tiring but none the less quite uncivilised thirty kilometres (with a stop for lunch) and since Reims is the most logical place to stay if one wants to view the Reims cathedral illuminations, against all advice, we stayed.
The noise isn’t too bad, and the view is OK for the engineering aficionados among us, although at last count there were none in our number. Motor racing fans pay vast sums of money to experience a similar sensory assault. The inhabitants below the freeway wished us no ill, and the cathedral light show was stunning.
The light show notwithstanding, we have to admit there other places which could lay claim to providing more tranquil surroundings.
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