Day 38 - Chartres

We all awoke early today and headed onto one of the grand lignes that took us to Chartres. The ride was about an hour and a half. Not bad. Ah!! Isn't it beautiful? I love it. Notre Dame de Paris ain't got nothing on Chartres. I love it. I have been wanting to see it ever since I learned about it in AP Art History. I had no idea that in about a year from that time, I would see it with my own eyes! Incredible.

Quaint town around the cathedral. Wouldn't mind living here!

A strange sculpture, bench thing.

You see all those tiny sculptures? Awesome!

More of the town.

It was a long way down from the wall.

Back of Chartres.

Chartres crop circle.

This makes me think of Beauty and the Beast.

I can't remember who he was. He was the first bishop of Chartres or something like that. Our guide told us that when they unveiled the statue, someone in the crowd said, "They've unearthed him!" It is a strange sculpture haha

The whiter part is the part that they cleaned. They took down the scaffolding about a month or so ago and they are going to put up more scaffolding to clean the rest of it in a month. I feel to fortunate to have been here when there was no scaffolding. Our guide, Malcolm Miller, told us that the cleaning will take about 5 years. It will look amazing when they are done, not that it doesn't already. Just some of the stained glass is hard to see.

The pilgrimage labyrinth that is on the floor of the Cathedral.

The actual center of the labyrinth. It is mostly covered up by chairs so this is about all I could get.

Then we got started on our tour. This is our tour guide. He was awesome. What he did for us was sat us down and just told us about the history of Chartres and about the stories of some of the stained glass. He was amazing! I could have listened to him talk about all the stained glass windows. He had a very soothing and interesting voice. It was a great tour.

As I've talked about before, it is really hard to get pictures in cathedrals because they are so dark. I bet when this is all cleaned, pictures will come out better because it will be lighter inside. The right window on the bottom is Christ's genealogy (the Stem of Jesse). The middle one goes through the Annuciation to some of Christ's adulthood (starting at the bottom left square going to the top right). The left window goes through Christ's adulthood. These are the oldest windows in the cathedral and they date back to the 11th century, I believe.

One of the rose windows in the transepts. There are five lancets below. The middle one has Anne and baby Mary in it. From the left, Melchesideck and David. After Anne, I forgot and Aaron. They are each standing on top of bad people like Nebechunezzer and Jeroboam.

Choir curtain sculpture.

Anne with Mary child.

Bottom left: Mary's death. Bottom right: Mary's assumption (her body was carried to heaven by angels). Main scene: Christ crowning Mary as the Queen of Heaven.

From left: Melchesidek, Abraham and Issac, Moses, Aaron, and King David.

Rose window on the other side of the transept (I know they look the same, but they are different). Mary with the Christ child is the the center. Around them are prophets holding other prophets on their backs. I can't remember their names.

Demonstrating skinning someone alive :)

Last Judgement. The redeemed are on the bottom left and the damned are on the bottom right walking into the open mouth of Hell. Awesome.

Zodiac symbols. It is basically a calendar.

This is a reliquary. The relic is part of Mary's robe. They used to have a lot more of it, but it was ripped apart during the revolution. But they still have this. Of course, no one knows it was Mary's, but it does date back to the 1st century. I want to believe it was hers.

Difference between the clean and restored version and the dirty and old version :) It would be cool to see it in its original splendor! I'll be back on June 7th. We'll see what they've done by then!

The columns are really interesting. The column on the left of the picture is an octagon with circle columns on every other side. The one on the right is a cylinder with 4 octagonal columns placed evenly around it. This pattern is repeated around the church.

There were several candles whose flames had gone out, so we relit them. We don't want their souls to be in trouble ;) and I'm a bit of a pyro.

Some have been burning for a long time.

The story of the Good Samaratin (on the bottom half) is combined with the story of the Fall. He made some very interesting comparisons between the two. The man leaving from his home is Adam and Eve leaving Eden. The road on/to Jericho is life. The thieves are those who attack our souls during our lives. The Good Samaratin is Christ, coming to help us. The man paying the innkeeper is Christ paying for our sins. The man saying he will come back is Christ saying he will come again. I hope that all made sense. I thought it was really interesting.

Then we decided to climb to the top of the tower. Oh dang. That is a long flight of windy stairs! I got such a work out! This is a view of the flying buttresses.

The walk was so worth it. It was beautiful up there. It made me a bit nervous. Actually, I am getting so nervous just looking at the pictures! It was very high!

View of the transept from the top.

You see those little kids? Yeah, we were way up there!

I thought this was cool. 1865! It could be fake, but I want to believe that someone carved it over 100 years ago!

I was there! :)

Then we headed down. Three of us counted the steps and we all came up with the same number - 286!! That is a lot of steps!

I loved it!! :D

I love this too, but not in quite the same way :)

On the train.

A few of us made a side trip to the chateau of one of the mistresses of Louis XV (I think). It was really cool. I loved the town.

Whomping willow :)

Beauty and the Beast

This is her chateau. We couldn't go in because it was closed.

I really wish we could have gone in the garden area back there.

It was an amazing day! After I got back to my place, we had dinner. It was really cool. On the center of the table was a raclette (sp?) cooker. You take these squares of cheese (raclette) and put them on a tiny pan and put them in the warmer. Once it's ready, you put it on a potato with some ham. It was so good! Even though my stomach is paying for it now... Oh well!