Chartres

Southwest of Paris lies Chartres, the place where I spend the first and last day of my easter holidays. I was able to escape from the city for only 18 euros retour to visit a gigantic and magnificent cathedral which stands out from a long distance. There is not much to visit in the town besides narrow alleys, a tranquil town atmosphere and plenty of restaurants. Of course the city has also been conquered by the McDonald's, place at which we had our lunch. Later we headed into the church, to which we managed to arrived without beeing too wet. With special lighting that illuminated all the details of the hand crafted rocks that build the church we walked thorugh all the corners of the church. A small concert also took place in the cathedral and we refuged there from the rain for about an hour. Later we took a small strall around the town and missed our train by a couple minutes, having to wait for 1 hour while drinking a nice warm coffee with a typicall french pain au chocolat.

foto by me. Chartres 25.03.08.France

I have to thank all the tourists for staying at Paris,Versailles and Disneyland during the weekend and not following me to Chartres. I tend to take a stroll through the city everyweekend and I have never heard as much spanish as I have this weekend. Im specifically refering to the spanish/catalan, if it wasnt for the eiffel tower I would have thought I was in Spain. At least in Chartres the easter celebrations were not inundated by too many tourists. On my way back I shared the train with a lot of people who were together with me traveling back to Paris to start another week at work. Many of them carring their luggages full of (i assume) cloths for the rest of the week-- until they get to go back home.

My day did have a couple of incidents. Although I had planned to catch the train to Chartres on time as in the stop at Versailles my friends were meant to jump on the same train I almost missed it. First I got lost in one of my multiple metro connections. Later once in the station, the machine was not willing to sell me a ticket to the city. After 10 minutes of queue the person who sells the tickets did not understand that I wanted a two way ticket. So, I had to just buy a one way ticket. I ran and jumped in the train, walked down four wagons to find a nice seat (4 minutes before departure) . At that moment I realized I had forgotten to stamp my ticket. I got off, ran all the way to the beggining of the station,stamped it, jumped on the first open door and heard the messages "ladies and genteleman this is the train in direction Chartres, the train is closing its doors". Relief.