{"id":7694,"date":"2007-07-20T19:05:39","date_gmt":"2007-07-21T02:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/?p=7694"},"modified":"2011-12-10T06:39:40","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T14:39:40","slug":"paris-and-chartres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2007\/07\/20\/paris-and-chartres\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris and Chartres"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

We got up slowly, ate a leasurely breakfast and headed towards the Louvre. Our bus tour to Chartres<\/a> left at 1:45P, so we had some time to walk around. We stopped at the Sennelier<\/a> shop (they sell artist supplies and Aviva loves to shop there when we’re in Paris). We walked by a statue of a nude woman reclining that had some graffiti scratched into the strategic parts.<\/p>\n

\"Aviva <\/a>
Aviva in front of an Indian restaurant <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A statue with scratched grafffiti in strategic places <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The weather has actually been cool, and so we stopped at a couple of tourist shops to get Aviva a wrap to help her stay warmer. Somewhere along the way I lost my sunglasses – we’ll try to retrace our steps tomorrow if we have time to see if we can find them (probably left them in a store we purchased things in). We ate at <\/a>L’Imperial, a cafe on Rue de Rivoli<\/a>. We sat across from an interior designer who works for a large multinational company; we talked for a while (he lit a cigarette and Aviva asked about the new laws in Paris about smoking – that started the conversation).<\/p>\n

We went over to the Cityrama, waited in line and finally got on our bus to Chartres; it takes about 1 1\/2 hours to reach the town. The cathedral is still visible miles from the town; its up on a hill overlooking the tributary that feeds the Seine.<\/p>\n

On the walk up to the <\/a>cathedral, we walked through an interesting park with some strange sculptures, mostly dedicated to World War II.<\/p>\n

\"There <\/a>
There are three wire sculptures in the garden – here’s one <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Sculpture <\/a>
Sculpture of boots <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A huge watering can <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The cathedral is famous for its stained glass windows – Chartres is located in a spot rich in sand very good for making glass, and they still make stained glass there today. The most famous color is blue – apparently the quality of the glass and the local cobalt made for a very rich blue color. There are windows in the cathedral that date back to the 1200’s, the windows over the entrance.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a>
The rosette window <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The rosette window <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The right side facade <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The oldest windows at Chartres over the entrance <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The front facade <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The famous blue windows of Chartres Cathedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The famous blue windows of Chartres Cathedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The famous blue windows of Chartres Cathedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The famous blue windows of Chartres Cathedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Some <\/a>
Some of the colored sunlight on the stone floor <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Cathedral <\/a>
Cathedral from below <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A sundial <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A stone carving from inside <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A detail of the facade <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A celestial device inside the cathedral <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The cathedral houses a piece of the veil of the virgin. In addition, there is a sculpture of the virgin on a pedestal which is revered. There are three pieces of the veil – one on display here, one in the museum in Chartres and one in a Swiss vault, all just in case….<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a>
The virgin on the pillar <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"The <\/a>
The veil of the virgin <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The tour was quite good, but too short – another 1\/2 hour on our own would have been nice. I bought a paper model of the cathedral, which I put together over a month – here is a link<\/a> to the English language brochure that came with the model, and here’s a link<\/a> to my blog to see how the model was assembled. We took the bus back to Paris. We walked over to <\/a>Yen at 265, Rue St Jacques<\/a>, a Japanese restaurant – I had a Japanese curried duck and Aviva had tempora with soba noodles.<\/p>\n

\"Rear <\/a>
Rear of card from Yen <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Front <\/a>
Front of card from Yen <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

We walked over towards the hotel, got some gelato and then crashed.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\nTranslate<\/span><\/a>\"\"\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We got up slowly, ate a leasurely breakfast and headed towards the Louvre. Our bus tour to Chartres left at 1:45P, so we had some time to walk around. We stopped at the Sennelier shop (they sell artist supplies and Aviva loves to shop there when we’re in Paris). We walked by a statue of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[731,64,730,143],"tags":[1059,2383,2352,1060,2382,1055,1061,1039],"class_list":["post-7694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chartres","category-france","category-paris","category-travel-foreign","tag-cathedral","tag-chartres","tag-france","tag-glass-art","tag-paris","tag-paris-2007","tag-stained-glass","tag-visual-arts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-206","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}