Retour à Normandy & Bretagne - Chartres

06 Avril 2012

A Four Day Weekend Challenge Begins

Destinations? Chartres, Rennes, Mont-Saint-Michel, St Malo, Caen

Partners in Crime? Florencia & Macarena (My beloved Argentinian ladies)

Thursday night, I trekked over to Florencia's after packing my back so that my morning journey to the gare would be much shorter. We left the apartment early, arriving in Chartres before noon. Our first question getting off the train was where to find the cathedral with the world-renowned windows -- our question was answered as soon as we walked out of the gare. Soaring above the rest of the town, we could see the towers all the way from the gare.

What we found there wasn't totally different from other churches we had seen from the outside. It was beautiful, of course, but here it is what is inside that counts. We walked in and we began to take in hundreds of windows. Beautiful windows, with unbelievable colors. The windows were huge and many depicted intricate bible stories.

When we stepped outside, we found lively architecture on the backside as well:

Behind the church, there were beautiful grounds with lively gardens and a magnificent view. We passed through a gate and found ourselves looking out over the whole town.

After, we explored Chartres, which we found to be more than just the church. It was a small town, a bit smaller than Compiegne, but there were several interesting sites, a large medieval neighborhood, and lots of shopping. Our main destination was the church, so we spent the afternoon wandering in and out of shops, looking at the architecture around the city from several different centuries.

Some of the shops were more bizarre than others. We found an awesome toystore, and I fell in love with a line of stuffed animals... in particular, a certain unbelievable soft hippo. It turns out the brand, Histoire d'Ours, is some sort of designer stuffed animal collection. Who knew? The hippo I was looking at for my new nephew Jackson was priced around 45€.

Histoire d'Ours

Another store was very large, a chain. I found shoes and a sundress for 8€ each, as well as a new summer top. The most bizzare though was the shop across the street: we didn't go in. We were too unnerved by the strange mannequins in the window with paper faces taped onto their bodies.

In another shop, we found cool old tins and signs, tiny glass and decorated statues, miniatures, and old hats. A lot of the things carried a vintage pricetag, but I snagged a couple excellent little things for excellent little prices (these things I can't reveal to you -- they're surprises for the folks back home ;)).

We continued through the old town,

finding old churches,

(some falling apart)

finding old houses with romantic bridges behind,

finding these people have many of the same ideas as me,

and finding new friends.

The rest was more of the same exciting things. We made our way back to the train, stopping for a tasty sandwich and a new almond pastry I had never tried. Back in the station, we passed some grand opening of a monop-something in the station, a convenience store sort of thing. There were tiny French flags everywhere. We ended up standing on the TGV to Rennes, because the train was full. Onward I went with my lovely Florencia, happy as can be on another grand adventure.

To be continued...