We leapt out of bed at 7 am this morning to finish preparing for our departure from the apartment. We left for a few minutes to find a hotel room for me when I return to Paris to catch my flight home, and we found one at the Hotel Marmotte, right across the Rue Montorgeuil from our apartment. Sweet! Then while we were out and without bags, we thought to get breakfast. Our usual little bakery was closed so we had to decide on another…I ended up getting a ham croissant and chocolate éclair. Then we grabbed our bags, locked up the apartment, and headed to the Montparnasse train station. Buying a train ticket on the SNCF was super confusing but we finally figured it out (we had to ask for help), and then we had to ask just where our train was—there were no signs posted. All this trouble and confusion because of a “social movement”—apparently train workers were on strike. Yay. ;)Finally we got on our train and headed to Chartres. The French countryside is absolutely beautiful! The green of the fields is nearly fluorescent in its greenness. I tried to take pictures from the train but my stupid camera hesitates before actually taking the picture, so I ended up with impressionistic photos of trees going by very fast. Oh well. Maybe next time I go I’ll break down and buy a better camera.
Our train pulled in to Chartres. We hadn’t made any hotel reservations because, again, it’s not the height of tourist season so we figured it would be no trouble. We had another thought coming! Chartres is a very quaint, pretty town, and we saw an awful lot of it in our quest to find a hotel room. We walked by 4 different hotels; two had no vacancy, one was closed for remodeling, and the fourth was expensive but only had three rooms left. So we took it. Sure was a gorgeous hotel room! It was the Best Western Grand Monarque. It was really cool, but for 140€ it should be! (And we found out why all the hotels were booked--there was a cosmetics convention in town or something.)
After dropping off our bags and checking out our room, we went and perused the cathedral. It’s 
famous for its stained glass, particularly what is called the Blue Virgin Window which unfortunately we didn’t get to actually see. They had taken it down pane by pane to clean and then put up a protective film over the outside glass to protect the stained glass. We wandered through the rest of the church and came back to watch them lift each pane through the scaffolding to the level each belonged. It was amazing! The guy on the ground stood on a plastic toolbox (we were aghast! Didn’t they know these were priceless??) and lifted a pane up to the guy on the first level of scaffolding, and so on. We could even see each pane flex each time. There was a woman recording the process for posterity, and when Anne asked her about it, she said something like, it wasn’t like this was the first time these people had done this. (They seemed so young, though!) Another thing about the cathedral at Chartres: in the stonework of the flooring in the main room is laid a labyrinth, which was made to symbolize the path to spirituality or enlightenment. Unfortunately for us they only remove the chairs once a week so people can walk the labyrinth, and we were there on the wrong day. Check out the 
link above to someone else's photo of it.
Finally we left and wandered through town a bit. We walked alongside a medieval wall (with slits, even!) that was breached in some battle in 1568 or something like that, according to the street signs. Chartres was a very picturesque (and clean) little town. I was impressed.
Finally we wandered back to our hotel and decided to try to find a Laundromat. We did—about three blocks or so from our hotel, so we fit our clothes together into one load. It seemed to take forever! (Guess I'm spoiled having my own appliances!) Finally our clothes were dry, and we decided to haul them with us (in bags) to go in search of dinner.
Funnily enough, it seemed that Chartres was just like small towns at home, where everything closes by 8. We were almost in a panic before we finally happened upon a nice little Italian restaurant where we had kir avec la peche (peach kir--white wine with peach liqueur) and shared a pizza so big the edges were well off the sides of the (large) plate. (Of course, being in France, we ate the pizza with forks and knives ;) We followed it with dessert—I had (finally!) chocolate mousse (mousse au chocolat) and Anne had Il Flottante (a large mount of soft meringue floating in a vanilla sauce). Hers was really tasty too.
Finally we wandered back to the hotel, where Anne took advantage of the glorious bath in our room and I had to ask the concierge for a bag of ice for my ankle...Word to the wise: Never go to Europe within a few months of spraining your ankle!
