Excursions: Chartres

Bonjour tout le monde!

1/28/2016

Today I went to the gloriously beautiful city of Chartres. It is about an hour train ride from the heart of Paris. The train ride itself was gorgeous with beautiful fields and adorable towns to look at. I started the day in Chartres walking around the older part of town. I felt as if I had been transported into the town in Beauty and the Beast. My friends and I walked along the little river and through the quaint streets with houses with blue windowsills and flowerpot

One of the adorable houses/streets in Chartres

Another cute house along the little river

  

We stumbled upon this church that was over a thousand years old next to the river. It had an art show going on inside of it with beautiful paintings of nature.

 

This church was built in the 1200s

After, My friends and I returned to the cathedral. This cathedral was mesmerizing. It had many statues on the outside, and the architecture and different shapes at the back of the temple was just as pretty as the stunning view from the front. There were nine large doors and the walkways were all carved into statues and stories, and there were gigantic stain-glassed windows on the inside.

Melissa (my roommate) and me in front of the cathedral

 

The back side of the Cathedral

On the inside we were able to have a tour in which the guide told us about different stories of six of the stained-glass windows on the inside as well as explaining one of the carved archways over a door on the outside. It is crazy to think that we only covered a small part of the whole cathedral. He told us stories with the stained-glass windows of Christ’s Birth, the twelve disciples, Noah and the Ark, the good Samaratin and more. It was awesome to be able to interpret the pictures in the windows.

 

The inside of the cathedral 

At the end a group of nine of us went into the crypt underneath the cathedral. The whole tour was in French, but I was so excited when I actually understood a lot of what the tour guide was saying. There were many different little chapels and also stained-glass windows down in the basement too.

In the Crypt downstairs

Overall, it was such a beautiful day, even if it was a tad chilly outside. I hope that I will have the opportunity to come back one day.

À Bientôt,

Claire Hunsaker