The view as soon as we got off the bus. Some things to note: ferris wheel, cathedral, lots of tour buses (there were even more behind us). I guess I can't complain about the hordes of tourists that were there because we were tourists too..................... I've gotten too used to hating on tourists #amiaparisianyet
Front of the Chartres Cathedral. I always prefer the sides of the buildings over the front... It just looks monolithic and there is too much of a stark contrast between the intricate details and plain, flat surfaces.
It's really tall.
Here's a partial view of the side. Isn't it so much nicer?
The rosace (rose window) above the main entrance of the cathedral.
C'est incroyable!! Look at how much detail goes into each window! We got a "tour" of the cathedral by THE leading expert on the Chartres Cathedral, Malcolm Miller. We got to sit down and just enjoy learning about the meanings in some of the windows. There was so much detail we got through four or five over the course of two hours - and that was rushed and incomplete! I could literally stay there for two weeks and not be able to look at EVERYTHING! A lot of my friends were really bored but I was actually quite interested because it was all Biblical stuff (it was also interesting to note extra things that the Catholics believe/study that Protestants don't). Also, you can't tell from the picture, but each pane of the window is about 1m or so tall!
Yay more windows! Sorry I don't really know how to take pictures. I'm just pretending to be a photographer because I have a fancy DSLR camera~
This rose window (1225-1230AD) is 10.5m in diameter. I forgot to mention earlier, but all the windows I took pictures of (and most of the windows in the cathedral) are the original, dating back to the Middle Ages! During turbulent times like the Revolution and the World Wars, the windows were carefully stowed away. These are even the original colors, they've only been cleaned, never recolored or anything!
This is really quite an awful picture, but I just wanted to show the difference between the restored windows vs. the unrestored ones. Like everything in France, everything is always being constructed or restored, which is why there is always scaffolding and weird stuff in my pictures. Sorry but it's not my fault!
So this beauty (altar place or something like that) doesn't actually belong here. It's from the Baroque period but when the church was demolished or whatever, they wanted to save this part of it but they didn't really know where so they decided to stick it inside the Chartres Cathedral. Not like it's a sacred and important historical landmark or anything. Nbd. Lol anyways it's pretty but it looks more out of place than Montparnasse Tower.
This is supposedly the veil of the Virgin Mary. It's been accurately traced back to the 11th century or something ridiculous like that, but there is a millennium that is unaccounted for! It was re-gifted among royal families of Europe/Middle East, but again, all we really know is that it's SUPER OLD. It might just be an old blankie though idk
Yay cute houses
Okay so here's the surprise. I step out of the church and all of a sudden I see a bunch of soldiers and military vehicles and basically this picture. At this point, I am very confused.
But enthused. These are definitely not the real thing but I'm guessing it has something to do with WWII.
Apparently, today was the anniversary of the liberation of Chartres during WWII! What a coincidence!
Not to brag, but I totally knew it was WWII related. WOOHOO! I'm starting to notice that WWII is a really big deal here in France. WWI also but more WWII.
The funniest part was the French actors who made the exhibition come to life! Look at how snazzy that outfit is. I really wanted to pet her hat.
The actors were dressed up as American soldiers and, as such, spoke mostly in English (at least the ones I talked to)!
Hurray WWII! Hurray liberation!
:D Do you see the smiley face??
Last view of the church before heading off to our fancy lunch. This fancy lunch was pretty good but it lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. Ridiculous. We were told that the city is beautiful and the church is beautiful and we should explore and yaddayadda. But by the time we were done with lunch, we only had 30min to walk around -- including the 10min it would take for us to walk back to the bus. I'm pretty salty about that, if you couldn't tell.
Goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes on top of something flour-y. It looked and tasted a lot better than it seems from the picture...
Chicken and strangely corn-y mashed potatoes. The chicken was thebomb.com
This chocolate disaster was exactly that: a disaster. I mean, I am always for chocolate, but it was just very dense and too heavy after the goat cheese and mashed potatoes and ugh. I would have enjoyed it better after a lighter meal. I would also enjoy one right now.
After lunch, Curran and I decided to take a walk around the cathedral. Look at the back of it; isn't it amazing?! This is what I mean: the front is always the least visually interesting.
Hey that's me!
And at the back of the cathedral was a balustrade of sorts and it looked out onto a labyrinth and a neighboring village? Not quite sure about that but the view was incredible!
Hey that's me (again)! Please excuse my frumpiness.
The back. Or the back of the side from a backwards angle?
The back of the side with a slightly more sideways angle? Yea it's 2h du MATIN right now so that would explain why I am being kind of weird. lalalalalala
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On the way back into Paris, our driver definitely struggled to navigate through the small streets. After passing by my house (literally) and driving in a circle 20 times (took 30min!) trying to turn into a small street, the driver gave up and just dropped us off at some really random location. I rentrer'ed (to go home), went running, and met up with my friends a while later for dinner and a "chill night." It was quite hectic at first: we (me, Justine and Amber) were meeting up with Natasha and Curran (who were not together) and a guy Justine met on Tinder + his friends. All the while, we were walking around trying to find a place that was selling alcohol! We finally found a place, my friends bought some wine and vodka and we met up with Natasha and Curran. At this point, however, Curran was with her friend Fiona (whom I met last week) and Fiona saw a friend on the street who was with her friend who was with his friend who was with her friend (Fiona + 4 friends only knew one person in the group each...). Curran kept saying on the phone that they found 4 Arabs who are super nice and I was just really confused because I thought they were complete strangers who started talking to them. ANYWAYS there was this whole mess of us losing each other and finally finding each other and then some people going to eat dinner while others had already eaten but EVENTUALLY it ended up being me, Justine, Natasha and Amber vs. Curran, Fiona & co. who went to go eat. We were going to meet up afterwards but, long story short, we didn't. My group went to the Seine and met up with Stephan (Korean-French), drunk Asian guy, Dutch guy, drunk Arab guy and (white) girlfriend who spoke a little bit of Chinese. At one point, I knew all of their names, but as I write this three weeks later, the names have eluded me. Anyways, I've long since realized that I hate the taste of alcohol, but I always give new ones a try just in case. Yea they all tasted horrible and I decided to just stick with water haha Okay it's time for pictures now:
THIS is when Frenchies do for a chill night. Bring a ton of wine and other alcohol (but mostly wine) and just hang out with friends. (Photo taken at approximately 11PM)
The group right next to us had a guitar which I thought was pretty cool except the guy was almost as bad as me and their singing was definitely worse. It was interesting entertainment though and it definitely contributed (positively) to the overall atmosphere! The group in the background was SUPER classy. They took a stone bench-ish thing and turned it into a little bar of sorts and they even brought wine glasses. Like, who does that? Oh, right, French people!
Amber and Natasha.
Justine and Amber and Natasha. Natasha, why you always gotta derp.
(Left to right) Dutch guy's arm, drunk Asian guy, girlfriend who speaks Chinese, drunk Arab guy. Drunk Asian guy kept asking me "Do you want to take a photo?" but it was kind of ambiguous because I didn't know if he meant take a photo with him, if he was going to take a picture of me, he mentioned selfie at one point idk I was confused and I think he just thought I was terrible at French haha
Here is a brief description of what was going through my head throughout the night:
Phase 0: (before the meeting) Wait, we have to meet people? I have to socialize? Ugh, Justine, why do you do this to me...
Phase 1: ohmygoshthisissocooli'mfreakingoutbecausei'minfrancewithrealparisiansandthisissocooli'mjustdrink[water]ontheseineandtherearesomanypeopleilovethisatmospherewhatismylifeeeee
Phase 2: We have a LOT of alcohol. Why is there so much alcohol. This is not okay. Oh wait, except for me, everyone is 21 or older. Wait but that doesn't even matter because the drinking age is 18 here. But so much alcohol. Who's gonna drink all that?
Phase 3: Alright, I can kind of get used to this...
Phase 4: (we started playing a game and I knew how to play after like one sentence of explanation in French and I ended up explaining it to everyone LOL I am truly the Game Master) GUYS C'MON IT'S NOT THAT HARD PLEASE KEEP THE BEAT DO YOU GUYS NOT KNOW HOW TO KEEP A RHYTHM? SLAP CLAP SNAP SNAP IS THAT SO HARD???
Phase 5: I really need to pee. (Justine actually went in some random alley way and later in the night, Natasha and Amber disappeared (separately) to go pee. It was crazy.
Phase 6: (Talked to drunk Asian guy... He was surprised that I could actually speak French!) Wow this guy is really drunk. This is hilarious. He should just speak French because his English is quite awful... He probably thinks he's being really insightful right now because he has no idea how drunk (and stupid) he sounds
Phase 7: Alright, the metro is closing in half an hour... We should leave guys...
It took soooo long for us to actually leave; from the first time I said we should head out to when we stood up to when we actually left. And out of nowhere, Justine decided to go home with Stephan, which was totally random because she wasn't even attracted to him (she texted us: NOT CUTE as soon as she saw him). Anyways, we were leaving, then Natasha decided to bring Justine with us because she was pretty drunk but Justine convinced Natasha she was alright. Then Natasha wanted to give Justine the left over bottle of wine so we had to go back. Then we walked the wrong direction from the closest metro and ended up going into different stations and we barely made it in time for the last ride at 1h30 (later we found out that the metro actually closes at 2h haha oops). We both made it home (I was afraid that Natasha wouldn't be able to make her transfer!) and I went to bed. Yay.
Well, not really. I don't know if it was having a real conversation with a real Frenchie (other than school administrators and my host family + dinner guests) or rushing to get on the metro, but I was really excited about today and I just wanted to tell someone about it. Unfortunately, no one was available to Skype or call or anything :( and if I were to text/FB message this to someone, I'm pretty sure they (*coughSarahcough*) would have just said tl;dr so here I am writing a blog post instead. Exciting adventures are exciting!
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Miscellaneous things of the day:
1. So I uncancelled my subscription to Netflix. Oops.
2. I made a Tinder. HAHA after hearing so much about Curran and Justine's (although her Tinder dates end up being a little more... wild) experiences, I decided I wanted to make French friends too! Strictly for friends, no shenanigans. Please don't judge me.
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