Winkler's Travelogue: Chartres

Well, after sitting on the plane and waiting for one hour to have bags taken off the plane for people who didn't show up for the flight - where do these people go? - and taking off in a driving rain storm, we had an uneventful journey across the Atlantic and landing in Paris early on Monday morning. Our Air Canada plane didn't warrant a loading bay, so we were shuttled from the back forty on the cattle bus.

We fairly quickly got transferred to our Renault car and headed out to find gas. Problem one was that we assumed that we remembered where the closest gas station was - this is crucial since a leased car comes with a sniff of gas - and the gas station wasn't as remembered. We drove a fair bit around the airport and hotel communities surrounding it and finally connected at a Carrefour. I know these cars don't require much gas, but come on! There could be a few more gas stations. While at Carrefour, we also stocked up on the essentials - brie, baguette and booze. Well, there might have also been apples and water, but who's keeping track? Then we set off for Paris and my, as promised, drive through the heart of the city. Problem two was that we neglected to add one single stinking map to our baggage and our Garmin was still having continental adjustment issues - she was still back at Blue Spruce Crt. - so we wandered for a bit and reviewed a few sites until we finally got directed to Paris. Meanwhile we were trying to get the Renault's GPS operational, which we did before my Garmin finally made it across the ocean and connected with European satellites. Now we had two GPS's and with my not so bad memory of Paris, we were navigating the interesting streets of Paris and driving down the Champs Elysee toward the Arc de Triomphe. No heart attacks yet!

We fortunately hit Paris over the lunch hour, so the traffic wasn't totally chocker blocked by the time I was navigating the Arc de Triomphe's roundabout - a 10 or whatever lane free for all.

We then veered off towards the Eiffel Tower. I mean any tourist in Paris has got to see the tower, right? Since it was a nice day, the grounds of the Eiffel Tower were crawling with people and we were glad to be safe in our car. All of a sudden the car was a safe place in Paris.

By now, it was time to get serious and (A.) Get to our first destination, Chartres and (B.) have some lunch, since it was now past 1:00 in the afternoon. So thanks to now operational GPS's, we blew Paris and made our way towards the southwest and Chartres. We soon found a stop on the highway for our first pique nique of the trip.

Less than an hour after that we were catching out first glimpses of the gothic cathedral in Chartres. We were immediately blown away.

We finally got to our Ibis hotel and decided to do our classic crash for a couple hours and then pretend there no such thing as jet lag and head off to see the cathedral and have dinner.

Since this cathedral has avoided major damage since the 1200's, it is indeed a true marvel of gothic design, with fabulous stained glass dating back to the 1500's and ornate gothic sculpture in its interior.

Labyrinths are an interesting feature of this cathedral, with a huge one on the floor of the interior, on which penitents crawled along it's path on knees for one hour. There is also a significant grass labyrinth in the gardens.

We chose dinner in one of the only open restaurants next to the cathedral and had nice mealson their patio of salmon for Carole, duck for Claude, chicken for Dawn and duck, duck liver and duck gizzard salad for me.

We were glad we stayed in the area for dinner because what happened after 9:00 at the cathedral blew our minds. We heard that you had to see the cathedral lit up at night, but were not prepared for the stunning sound and light show that we witnessed. Two sides of the theatre were awash with ever changing light effects that were as uplifting as they were astounding.