We spent today in Chartres, a small city not too far from Paris, famous for it's cathedral, Notre Dame de Chartres with spires in two different styles. One is romanesque and one is gothic. Our fantastic tour guide taught us all about the gothic style as well as the practical things one needs to build a cathedral. One of the sophomore boys, Logan, correctly answered two of the tour guide's questions. The first one was "Why would they have only built one spire in the 11th century, and not both?" Logan answered correctly, "They ran out of money" Money was a central theme. Did you know that half the money it took to build a cathedral of this magnitude was spent on the stained glass windows? Once inside the church, the guide told us that money was often given to the church by various guilds. The guide asked, "Do you know any guilds?" and Logan answered, "The Lollipop guild!" I must say, it was a good two minutes before we could continue the tour. We were all laughing so hard. I learned a lot of things about the cathedral that I found extremely interesting, but I won't bore everyone with French history here. But if you look at the first picture, the ceiling above the alter is much whiter than the rest of the walls. This is because they realized that there is eight centuries of dirt on the stone inside. So with 500 million euros, they were able to clean just the arches above the alter. You can really see the difference inside.
After the visit of the cathedral, we ate lunch in a creperie. I had a ham, cheese, and mushroom crepe followed by one with chocolate and powdered sugar. Yummm. We then had a tour of the city, walking along its quaint cobblestone streets, along the river, and back up to the cathedral.
Several of the students joined me and Fabienne tonight while their French students studied for exams. We walked around the St. Germain quarter, stopping into boutiques along the way. I finally found a blue scarf for Cory!! At last! I've only been looking since last summer. So yay, Cory. You have a scarf.
Happy Mardi Gras!!!!
800 years of dirt makes the cathedral look a lot like my place! It must have been quite beautiful when it was new. Didn't anyone take photos when it was first opened? The cobblestone street is a fabulous photo and makes you want to visit Chartre tomorrow!
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