Chartre and another light show!

Last time I was in Chartre was 30 years ago with my sister. Actually 30 years ago next month. We managed to take the train from Paris for the day and saw the cathedral with the amazing 12th and 13th century stained glass. I think we found the church, walked around and walked back to the train. This time I thought the city warranted an overnight which turned out to be a great idea because they have a light show!
The train on Angers was late, keeping up my history of trains coming back from trips being messed up, but made it to Le Mans with plenty of time to 1)decide there is nothing in that city I need to visit, 2) make a leisurely connection to Chartre. Once there it was a quick ride to the hotel, which had lovely big rooms with cathedral ceilings. The walk to the cathedral was through a growing downtown but it being Monday most shops were closed. The cathedral really is the only awesome thing to see in the town although parts of the town have old small roads which are fun to walk.

Although the plan was to have an audio tour, there was an English speaking tour led by an American leaving shortly after we got to the church so it made sense to join that. We spent two hours walking the cathedral, learning how it was up to seven churches built on the same site, looking at the outside to see all the different architecture styles, including two very different steeples.

We went to the crypt and saw the fifth century church remain and some frescos including one of Richard the Lionhearted. There is a major renovation project underway so you can see the before and after of the cleaning of the stone in the church which was very interesting in the contract of how much dirt was being removed. Finally, we saw Mary's veil, which was given to the church by Charles the Bold, Charlemagne's son as it was a gift to his father from the Empress of Byzantium. We learned it survived a fire that destroyed the church in the 1100's being saved by three priests who took it to the cellar and hid there during the fire.
We also learned of the American who had saved the church in WWII. Although all the glass had been removed early in the war, half to Vichy and half in the cellars after the trains to Vichy were bombed making the trip unsafe for such precious items, Americans thought the church was held by the Nazis and were ready to bomb it until a lone American went in and realized it was empty. Wellborn (yep, weird name) Griffith was a colonel and USMA graduate who in August 1944, climbed the tower to make sure the church and area were free of Nazis which resulted in rescinding the order to shell the cathedral. He was killed later that day in a neighboring town but was posthumously awarded a number of French and American medals. For 60 years his family did not know the story as the plagues were to Griffith Wellborn, not Wellborn Griffith.

The best part of staying at Chartre besides not needing to run to catch a train after the tour ended was the fact that like Rouen, Chartre has a light show. In this case a light show is shows on the front of the cathedral but then also throughout the town in almost a dozen different buildings. It was a lot of fun walking through the town at night looking for the 21 different sites.