1. Chartres. The little medieval town of Chartres reminded me a lot of the south of France and Aix, minus the fountains. A very small downtown area with cute little stores, amazing boulangeries, a couple larger squares with cafés, Roman obelisques, flower beds planted here and there to add to the charm. Situated on a hill, you could walk down these uneven steps past the famous cathedral and get to another part of town off the beaten path with a little man made canal and cute houses built in the style of those of Alsace-Lorraine (with the wooden beams intersecting on the outside of the molding/paint) that had the appearance of emerging right up from the water. The main reason to come to Chartres is to see the cathedral, the cornerstone of town literally, connecting the two sides, and symbolically. The one standing today has parts of its original that was built in 1067 (that's really really old even for a cathedral) and it is known because it has the most stained glass windows of any cathedral in the world with 176 panels. Of these, there are a few originals that were put up in the 1200s, the three large windows above the entrance and one gorgeous upright window of the Virgin Mary where she is shown wrapped in a brilliant blue colored cloth. Most of the windows were restored in the 18th century but they were all beautiful to look at. The cathedral is a UNESCO world heritage site (one of the originals, inscribed in 1979) and it is where King Henry IV was crowned king in 1594. It is one of the first cathedrals in all of Europe to use the gothic architectural style. Originally built in the Roman style, a fire in the 1300s brought the possibility (and need) for renovation, which came in the form of flying buttresses, Gothic style arches (ogival) rounded that come to a point at the top, and more ornate supporting columns and detail work. Chartres cathedral then became a model for all cathedral builders in France and England. The other interesting part of the cathedral that was new to me was the presence of this "labyrinth" in the middle of the central nave. by labyrinth, I mean there was a design made on the floor that resembled concentric circles with various paths and connecting lines, and in the middle there was a large circular plaque that used to have names inscribed on it. Apparently labyrinths such as these were common features in the Medieval period cathedrals, this one was started in1200, and it is meant to be a spiritual journey and a state of mind that you put yourself in while walking around the cathedral, finding yourself closer and closer to God and Jesus if you are on the right path. Right, so anyways, it was a huge cathedral and very nice, since it was one of the first to transition from Roman to Gothic style there was not a whole lot of light coming in which made it hard to see the beauty of some of the windows, but it definitely gave the feeling of going back in time. That was the higlight of Chartres. Oh also, the many day trips also made me realize how many train stations Paris has, as literally each trip left from a different station. On the way to Chatres we passed these fields and fields of little yellow flowers that stretched on for miles, and the yellow was this beautiful electric yellow with the flower bulb hovering a foot or two off the ground but there was enough color and we were going fast enought o give the illusion of a field of yellow, like yellow grass or something. In french they're called corzas, I dont' know the translation. A nice addition to the trip nonetheless.
2. Giverny: last weekend we went to Giverny, to the Northeast of Paris, the home of Claude Monet and his famous waterlily pond. Again the town was nice, this time it was not really even a town just a street really with very very few inhabitants, no stores, the one café with homemade ice cream and one hotel. We walked along the main road (Rue Monet wouldn't you know) and found the one church and the one cemetery with his family tomb, we also apssed this house with these giant sand sculpture statues, one of a viking ship and the other of the last supper which were very cool and very randomly in the middle of this tiny town. They don't disintegrate in the rain or any weather condition and they were pretty impressively detailed. Next to this house there were some public gardens which were beautiful, the flowers had just come into bloom and whatever landscaper designed the layout of having big tulips surrrounded by the little white bulbs , varying the height and size and colors of the flowers to make it really interesting, did a great job. We finally made it to Monet's house and after starting in the gift shop (the tour direction makes you), we entered his private gardens which were even better. There were rows and rows of flowers and each bed had two main colors, two shades of pink or purple or red or yellow, and there was greenery framing each bed and basically it all looked perfect, right out of a catalogue. We walked along, entered his two story house which was pretty nice and looked right out onto the gardens, I remember it had this giant traditional kitchen with copper pots and pans hanging along the wall, including a special crepe pan, and a big wooden table with a huge slab of thick wood. We had to take an underground passage to get to the Japanese garden and the waterlilies, which was like entering another world when you stepped into that part of the garden. Bamboo shoots were everywhere and weeping willows over the banks of the this lake, with a little canal on the side, and the waterlilies I think must not have been in season yet because they were a surprisingly awful purply color, they looked dead to be honest, but apart from that the ambiance was great, we saw the famous little bridge and took lots of pictures, and there were some giant buses of bight pink flowers and white flowers that caught our eyes (excuse my lack of technicality as I have no idea what the proper names of any of these flowers were). And that was basically Giverny. Very very beautiful and very very small, also the train dropped us off at Vernon which is 4 km away so we took a bus to Giverny although you could have rented bikes and ridden along the pretty hillsides which I would have liked to have done.
3. Chantilly: Chantilly is another little town, it's bigger in the sense that it has more residents than Giverny by far, maybe equal to that of Chartres not sure, but it's much more spread out, no tiny little winding streets. It has a large forested area that was nice to walk in and a fairly large canal with ducks and coots (those black ducks with white beaks, not found in North America), on the edge of the city. But the actual reason to come to Chantilly is to see the castle! There's the giant castle built for a duke I guess, and it is surrounded by lots of acres that were used for the horses, now it has a horse racing track and these magnificent stables that look like they could be a chateau themselves, really they were amazing stables. The castle itself was beautiful, there was a lake (not a moat) running around the front and you crossed a bridge to go through the Gates of Honor, and up the path to see the chateau on the left hand side and on the right the hunting lodge and to your immediate center the main part fo the French gardens wiht a big pond and statues and sculpted bushes and all that jazz. Problem was, they are mid-renovation of the gardens, by mid I mean they have a long long way to go and they wont' be finished until October! Which means when we went all of the statues in the middle garden were covered in trash bags, and there was that orange tape up everywhere roping things off and none of the fountains had water in them, so it was kind of a let down, although we liked the castle itself very very much. The pond in the front had these weird amorphous fish that were really scary, they kind of slithered around the water and I thought they were eels, and the tops of their backs came just a tad about water level so the way the light reflected their scales they just looked creepy and they didnt really move like fish normally do, and they were pretty big. Just a tangent. As for the gardens, in the center there were the French gardens, to the left the English gardens, and to the right a big Park (ironically called the Little Park) with pathways and random statues inside, we did see two huge bucks which was cool and which gave credibility to the signs saying 'Beware of wild animals, they can kill'. Oh there was also a hameau (hamlet) basically a mini mini mini village of two or three houses and a little manmade stream running through , with a little water mill and all that was the inspiration for Marie Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles. In the back of the park was this big body of water called La Cascade, the waterfall or, cascade, but it turned out just to be a big lake which again was sadly disappointing. The redeeming part of this park was the kangaroos that we saw in the menagerie near the sport field (also a random addition). But there were 20 wallabies enclosed in these chicken wire fences that were so cool to look at! They didn't really hop, they looked more like dogs with big fat mouse tails who moved like monkeys if that gives any sort of visual picture, and they were prety small and a dark brown color not a tan color like I might have guessed, but still definitely cool. That was pretty much Chantilly. It is also the town were Chantilly creme (whipped cream essentially) was invented, but it wasn't hawked as a local treasure to the extent that I would have expected, I mean we walked around the town a little and didn't see any souvenir stores or signs for Chantilly cream, so unfortunately we didn't get to try the real thing straight from the source. Oh well.
4. I think I already talked about Vaux le Vicomte? The castle built by Nicolas Fouquet, inspiration for Versailles, reuntied Le Notre, Le Brun and Le Vau, the three greatest architects/sculpteurs/landscapers of the time, and Fouquet was then sentenced to death for some thing having to do with his funds but really to put him and his influence out of the way. That was thefirst day trip. Now all that's left on the list is Normandy beaches and Fontainebleau, two of the more well known day trips.
