According to the tour book, tourists should visit one of the little towns that surround Paris. We took the train to Chartres, about 60 miles southeast of Paris. On the train trip down, we were surprised to see a lot of countryside and farms between Paris and Chartres. This little town has three major churches. The newest on the left is 15th century, but the first church at this site dates back to the 4th century. The oldest on the right is 11th century, and used to be a Benedictine monastery.

Chartes has an active stained glass community. Their workshop doubles as a stained glass museum. The piece above shows St. Michael fighting off the forces of evil. It struck my fancy because the man in the lower right looks for all the world like a little boy who got a boo-boo on his finger. We saw a large number of historic pieces, mostly after 1540, but some going back to 1000 AD. The basement of the museum has a large gallery of modern pieces made by the local artisans.

Chartres is known for their evening illumination. We ran out of things to see, so we found a quiet bench and opened our E-readers. Chartres has some kind of projected light show, which starts at 9. The last train back to Paris leaves at 9:30. We weren’t going to see the show. Along the way, we saw several houses with projections of locals who were important to local history.

An alert reader will notice there are only two churches shown illuminated. We did not see the center church last night. We were standing at the furthest church when a lightening storm started rolling in. We took a quick pic and took hi-tailed it back to the train station. The shortest route didn’t include the middle church. We were still a block from the train station when the rain started in earnest.  Fortunately, we made it back in time to catch an earlier train. Unfortunately, the earlier train was significantly delayed. We ended up waiting at the train station for the 9:30 train.

We obviously missed a lot of history and many interesting stories. But we had a delightful time none the less.