Let's go and discover Beauvais and Chartres! 🙂
Day 1 – Saturday (27/06/2015)
We took the flight from Dublin at 6:25 am and in less than 2 hours we arrived in Beauvais. For those who don't know, this city is an hour from Paris and is where all flights to Paris land.
Well, it's really strange, but who am I to complain, right? They can charge super cheap prices and we only need to take a bus to get to the French capital. We arrived at the “super” Beauvais airport and looked for stores that sold SIM cards, so we could use GPS on French roads (the famous Google Maps, in our case). As we suspected, we couldn't find anything at the airport and had to rent a car and make do with a rough map of the city in the center of Beauvais.
We got lost a few times, but we managed to find an Orange store (we paid 20 euros to have internet for 1 week) in the city center, which was actually next to the Beauvais Cathedral. We hadn't even planned to visit it, but since we love going into cathedrals/churches/synagogues and the like, there we went. Look how beautiful it is:
Construction began in 1225 and the plan was for it to be the tallest 13th-century cathedral in the world, but as the years went by, the structure proved to be insufficiently strong, causing several collapses. It is currently unfinished, and you can tell by the fact that it has a somewhat flattened part and several metal structures helping to support the older structure. It's a shame, because it would have been truly incredible. Oh, and admission is free.
We continue with Google Maps to Chartres, taking the path below.
Near Paris, we went through a very claustrophobic tunnel, ridiculously high, that seemed to have no end. Horrible. If I had known, I would have told Celo to take another route. What do you think?
We arrived in Chartres around noon and we went straight to see the famous Cathedral (a mistake, after all...you'll soon find out why). Detail: you can see it from the road itself and its size is impressive! We parked the car in the lower part of the city and went up the hill to the cathedral, passing through cute streets, with a super romantic canal.
As we imagined, the cathedral is also beautiful up close. Considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, it is one of the most visited attractions in the country, as it is a religious monument with several important aspects: it is a model of the great Gothic cathedrals, has the largest collection of stained glass windows from the 12th and 13th centuries in the world and also has 3 charming medieval portals. It is believed that its construction began in 1020, but after a fire in 1194, it was rebuilt with the help of the population in just 25 years. The highlights are, therefore, the stained glass windows and the portals, as well as the largest crypt in all of France, which dates back to the 11th century.
We left the cathedral around 2pm and went looking for restaurants to have lunch, as we were starving. To our unpleasant surprise, all of them were already closed!!! How frustrating, guys!!! We couldn't find any open ones to tell the story. We went back to the car, having learned our lesson, and had to eat the snacks I had taken for the road. I had a bit of a slip-up at the beginning of the trip.
We continue our journey to the Loire Valley, a region known for its wonderful castles, with the hope of having a decent dinner. I can already tell you that we did! =D.
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WhatWant to know more details about our 9-day trip through the interior of France (Loire Valley, Périgord, Quercy and Bordeaux)? Just click on the links below:
