Day 2 - Amiens to Reims

Day 2 Amiens to Reims

L'ecluse

Woke up after a lovely sleep in the Palace and ate a breakfast of coffee and 'Croc Madame', which is a ham and cheese toast with an egg on top, Romain is the boss of breakfast!  After we ate we went to the venue to load the gear from the night before and went to have coffee at Charles' place. He lives in a picturesque detached house in Amiens right next to a network of canals, which he kayaks on.  After coffee we filled up the Cardis with fuel, said goodbye to Charles and Romain and made our way to Reims.

The show was with Nico (Seal of Quality) and Papier Tigre in a squat just down the road from a big circus top where we played last time we were in Reims.  The drive was pleasant, we're trying to avoid the toll roads on shorter journeys because it's cheaper and there is so much more to see; I think that being on tour is one of the only times when 2-3 hours is a 'short drive'.

The lads

We arrived at the venue shortly before 7 and unloaded the gear. The show was being organised by a guy called Clement who has put us on a couple of times before in Reims, he's a real cool dude.  We were playing in the basement of the squat, which looked like a big concrete oven.  Once we sent up the gear we ate a nice meal of pasta, salad and olives with Clement and the guys from Papier Tigre. We then watched Nico play, who was awesome as usual.  We played after Nico, I think that we played quite well and people seemed to enjoy it, it was quite a small room but it was full of people to the atmosphere was really good.  Papier Tigre played after us and they were incredible. I have their second record and it was really good to hear the songs from it performed.  After the show everyone was in high spirits with lots of chatting and drinking with the guys from Papier Tigre and Reims locals. It was nice to see quite a few people who had come to see us play in Reims before.  We fed Clement quite a lot of Balti mix (like Bombay mix but spicier) and it was too spicy for him, the French don't seem like they can handle hot food. We retired at around 4.30, I think we'll have to rein it in a bit after we play in Nancy, as we'll have a 7-8 hour drive to Montpelier the morning after… much less whiskey.

Clément & the Balti Mix