Monday 9/17

Famed Chartres cathedral....a broken dolmen at the archaelogical site....


The skeleton at the archaelogical site, and the Lego display! (Note the tiny bodies in the dolmen!)





What a spectacular day!

A few years ago in the Vendee we met Anne, a friend of Jeanne and Bertrand’s. We had had a mixup on dates, and were due in Paris a day earlier than our hotel reservation, and they were full. Anne graciously invited us to stay with her for the night, and we were awestruck at her lovely penthouse in Montmartre. Her apartment was actually two – the two sides of a house that had been built in the early 19th century for an artist, and obviously well-off artist. One side of her apartment was his studio –a huge room with high ceilings and a wall of glass with a view to the north. The other side was new to her, facing the street, overlooking the trees. The hall between was actually a landing between the two which had been separate apartments. It looked into the large, curving stairway, decorated with a variety of nudes frolicking in the forest – our favorite part. It was also the first time that I had seen hand-embroidered linen sheets, with a monogram as big as a saucer. I felt as if I had stayed awake all night looking at it.

We have seen Anne a few times since, and when we were in the Vendee – can it only be last week? – she said we would have a day together when we reached Paris. And today was the day. She picked us up in her car, and drove us the hour or so to Chartres. We stopped in a bar for coffee, then walked the short distance to the cathedral. Tom and I had visited briefly a few years ago, and had been disappointed to see it grimy and dark. This time it was pretty well cleaned on three sides, with scaffolding up on the fourth tol finished the job. Anne explained that in 1999 the “tempest” that hit Paris the day after Christmas and did so much damage, had damaged the roof. The church could not be cleaned properly until the roof was repaired. They are just now getting the project done.

We walked around the church carefully, as Anne read to us from her guidebook. By the time we finished with the outside, we decided that we were ready for lunch, and found a café where we enjoyed fish and steaks, and Anne and I shared a nectarine clafouti for dessert.

Then it was time to tackle the inside, which is the darkest church I have ever been in. Anne augmented the various informational displays in French and English with her guidebook, and we took out time going around and around. She pointed out the labyrinth in the floor, which was pretty well obstructed by the chairs, and got us a little book about it before we left.

Then it was off to her house a few miles away. On the way she pointed out the various mills and chateaux in the neighborhood. As we were going through a little river valley, we saw a chainlink fence with some sort of work going on, and a dolmen. (Tom says we need a bumpersticker that says “We stop for Dolmen”.) as soon as we walked inside, a young man came over to give us a tour, and told us about the history of the site and to explain the archaeological works. It was a transitional site as the people went from a hunting-gathering existence to agriculture. The dolmen were originally prehistoric structures that were then used by the Merovingians. At some point, for some unknown reason – perhaps they were moving on – they destroyed the horizontal rock that covered the structure. Some were used as burial sites, and others for some kind of habitation.

Two features of our little tour were astonishing. The first is the skeleton that is being unearthed, one of several from this site. The other was what our guide called “the little museum exhibit” – made of Legos! Turns out that there is a Lego factory in Chartres. But the sight of the “museum exhibit” in Legos, complete with little plastic bodies, was just a hoot.

Then off to Anne’s country home, which she lived in as a child and inherited from her parents. The day had become dark and cold, as forecast, and we had tea and a praline cake and chatted for a bit, before making our way back to Paris. Since it was pretty late – about 9:30, we decided to have dinner near Anne’s apartment, then Tom and I would make our way back to ours by the metro. We went to a Turkish restaurant, and had a lovely and delicious meal before getting back in the rain.