Categories: Day-Trips from Paris, Loire Valley

555 Day Trip to Chartres from Paris with Patricia Perry and Jennifer Gruenke (July 20)

 

[00:00:16] Introduction and Welcome

Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 555, cinq cent cinquante-cinq.

Annie: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

[00:00:30] Today on the podcast

Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Patricia Perry and Jennifer Gruenke about a fun trip the three of us went on between Paris and Chartres. We share our tips on what to see and do from the awe-inspiring Chartres Cathedral to charming local attractions. A great episode for people who want to take an easy day trip from Paris with a little help from Join Us in France.

[00:00:54] Podcast supporters

Annie: This podcast runs on chocolatine, caffeine, and the support of lovely humans like you. You book itinerary consults, take my VoiceMap tours, ride shotgun in my electric car, come to the boot camp, or slip me a few euros on Patreon, and I love you for it. Want to keep me going and skip the ads? There’s a link for that in the show notes.

Annie: And head to joinusinfrance.com/boutique to purchase any of my services, and thank you so much.

[00:01:24] Magazine segment

Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Jennifer and Patricia, I’ll discuss three topics. This is to make up for the times when there is no time for the magazine.

 

Annie: Number one is changes coming to Paris Metro tickets. These changes have been coming for a while, but now they’re serious. Paris honoring women in science, and listen up, how to choose a restaurant in Paris, or in France for that matter. If you’d like all the links with the full transcript of the episode where we spell all these words correctly, all these mysterious French spelling, you’ll find everything on the page that lists all the episodes by month at joinusinfrance.com/episodes. Plural, there are many, many of them.

Annie: And if you’d like a handy summary of the conversation with all the useful links, subscribe to the newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter. It is the best way to stay in the loop.

 

Annie: Bonjour Patricia Perry and Jennifer Gruenke, and welcome to Join Us in France.

Jennifer: Bonjour Annie.

Patricia: Bonjour, tout le monde.

Annie: Lovely to see you both.

[00:02:46] Planning a Day Trip to Chartres

Annie: So today we’re going to talk about Chartres, the beautiful, beautiful city of Chartres not too far from Paris. And we are going to specifically discuss it as a day trip from Paris, for people who perhaps spend a little longer in Paris and have some time to go explore more outside of the city. Jennifer, you… so we went together this winter, and enjoyed that very much, but you’ve been there before, right? You had a summer trip there as well.

Jennifer: Right. In July, I went with a friend and we stayed overnight so that we could see the lights on the cathedral.

Annie: That’s probably a good idea, right?

[00:03:25] Chartres en Lumières: The Light Show Experience

Jennifer: Yeah, I think if you’re going to take the time to go to Chartres, the highlight of the trip for us was seeing the Chartres en Lumieres, I think is what they call it. They have these projectors, large colored projectors, and so there is a video that is tailored to the cathedral and it gives the history of the cathedral from the building through, you know, there was a fire,through the World Wars and up until modern day.

Jennifer: And then in addition to that, they have lights in other places in the town. And there is a map that you can get at the tourist office that shows you all the places to go.

Annie: Is that a free thing or do you have to get tickets?

Jennifer: No, it’s free. There is a little tourist train that will take you around and that you have to pay for, but if you walk, it’s free.

Annie: Right. And so typically activities like this happen in the summer months, but also around Christmas, around school vacations very often. When we have those wonderful long weekends in the month of May, they know they’re going to have more visitors and so they typically have them at those times. But I would recommend that you check with the tourist office before planning a thing like this. They don’t typically publish a schedule of exactly when we’re going to do it next year or whatever. But this is what you can expect, and if you check with the tourist office, they can give you more details as the time comes.

[00:04:58] And Inexpensive Self-Guided Day Trip from Paris

Patricia: And, a bonus for going in the dead of winter is that you could do this in one day because it gets dark at 5:00, and it’s only a one-hour train ride from Paris so you could just zip back, you know, at 7:00 or 8:00, you’re home by 9:00, good to go.

Annie: Yeah, that’s how we did it, really, from Paris. I mean, it’s not a TGV, it’s not a… it’s a regional train, but it’s an hour and a half. It’s really inexpensive. I think it was 10 bucks each way or something.

Patricia: Yeah, because we had a little bit of an advance ticket, but logistically, I was just looking, you know, at our budget so even paying the maximum price at today’s rate, it’s 15 euros each way, so 30 euros to go, maybe two euros in Paris to get to Gare Montparnasse, which is in the Left Bank, the south side of Paris. Then we maybe like, 20 euros for lunch, it’s 10 euros or maybe less than that for the video tour, 10 euros for an in-person tour, and then if you want to buy something like a book, 10 or 15 euros. So you could do the whole thing easily for about 80 euros.

Patricia: And I looked at the price of going with a, like a viator tour, which they’re very good, they have very good guides, it was 330 euros per person for a five-hour tour exactly like what we did.

Patricia: But, you know, they do have very good tours and it was private transportation, so it’s a choice.

Annie: Right, right. There are ways to do this inexpensively and honestly I don’t see the… I mean, once you get to the cathedral, they have some tours there. The tour guide we had, I didn’t think was… He was a bit of a character. I’m sure he knew everything there is to know about this cathedral, but he was a little bit disjointed in his presentation, let’s put it that way.

[00:06:40] Malcom Miller, expert on the Chartres Windows

Patricia: And there is an older gentleman from England who is the expert, really, on the Chartres windows, his name is Malcolm Miller. He’s in his 90s now and he only does very short private tours, but you can buy his book. He is truly, you know, he’s been recognized by France for his contribution to the history of Chartres, so buy his book, take a look at it before you go or after you go, it’s excellent.

[00:07:02] Exploring Chartres: Key Attractions and Tips

Annie: So what all did you see when you went to Chartres? Since you spent longer, Jennifer, what are all the things that you enjoyed there?

Jennifer: Well, we left early Friday, so we got there before we could check in to our Airbnb. There is a place where you can hire a locker, just to the right of the courtyard in front of the cathedral. It was closed in the winter, because I saw it whenever we were there, but in the summer it was open for five euros you could, you know, we put two backpacks in one locker. Then we went to the tourism office to get that map, for the light show later. Then we went out and walked around the town, saw the cathedral a little bit. It’s nice to walk along the river, which our group didn’t have time to get down there, but it is a very pleasant walk. You can see some of the remnants of one of the original ports or gates into the city.

Jennifer: I would recommend that as soon as you arrive in town, you go to the cathedral to book tickets for a tour of the upper levels of the cathedral, because it was sold out for that Friday, but we were able to book tickets for Saturday. It’s a tour in French, but even if you don’t speak French, it’s really cool to get up in the upper levels of the cathedral. So it’s worth seeing even if you can’t understand everything.

Jennifer: Also on that Friday, we went to do the labyrinth. So this is one of the most famous things about the Chartres Cathedral, in the Middle Ages, it was pretty common for these cathedrals to have a maze or labyrinth set into the floor in the stones. It’s a different color of stone. And pilgrims to that cathedral would walk this path, and it is, I think, one of the very few cathedrals that has retained its original labyrinth. And you can go on Friday, 10:30 AM to 4:45 PM and walk this labyrinth in the floor.

Annie: You mean today?

Jennifer: Yes. Let’s see, it’s between Lent and November 1st, you can go on a Friday, 10:30 AM to 4:45 PM, except for the Friday before Easter when it is closed.

Annie: Okay. Yeah, because when we went, there were pews over the labyrinths. We could see it, but you couldn’t walk it, because the whole idea was to have a meditative kind of walk, circular walk around, because typically pilgrims would walk around the edges of the cathedral and would just circumnavigate the whole length and size of the cathedral, and say prayers, and stop at every different saint, and say different prayers and whatever. Visit the relic that each specific cathedral is famous for. But they also had this circular thing in the center of the cathedral, which was another opportunity to meditate and think about whatever it is that they were thinking about.

Annie: But it’s a very nice experience, and you have to imagine it with people who have been… a cathedral chock-full of people who have been hiking,pilgrims who are all engaging in this… the only thing that we can see today that’s kind of similar to that is the Hajj, that the Muslims do where they all walk around their… Is it called the Hajj? Maybe it’s not.

Jennifer: The Hajj is the name of the pilgrimage.

Annie: Okay. Yeah. So, they go and they walk around this central, beautiful… I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a similar idea, the walking and meditating and things like that.

Jennifer: Well, today they still have the Camino de Santiago. Okay, it is part of it. Yeah, that’s right, we saw the little shell set into the ground. Yeah, I think most people visiting are not walking there, but theoretically you could walk from Paris to Chartres as part of the Camino.

Annie: What else did you do?

[00:11:12] Picassiet

Jennifer: What else did we do? So we also then, on Friday night, of course, went to see the light show. On Saturday we went to see Picassiette, which is this very quirky house and garden that was constructed by this one guy who came back from World War I and bought this property in the outskirts of Chartres. You can walk in 20 or 30 minutes.

Jennifer: And he covered everything in mosaics made from broken dishes, and so it’s called Picassiette as a play on words because of Picasso and Assiette means plate, I think, in French. So if you like sort of weird, quirky sights, this is a must-see.

Annie: Yeah. And it’s not open year-round. I wanted to go see it, and they… it closed in the wintertime, so check the dates of opening. Again, it’s probably starting in March or April, and every long weekend and every school vacation and, like, if you go at Christmas, I would bet they open it as well, just around the Christmas school holiday, because they know they’re going to get more visitors. So how long does it take to see the Picassiette? You said it’s about 30 minutes to walk there and back, so an hour walk?

Jennifer: Yeah. I mean, we were probably there for an hour or so, just kind of taking our time. It’s not real big, but there’s a lot of little details if you want to sit and look at the details. If you really just want to go and see it real quick, you could be in and out in 10 minutes, I suppose.

[00:12:47]  Les Fresques de Belair

Jennifer: We also went to see Les Fresques de Belair, which is a block of sort of generic apartment buildings that were painted with murals, and so they turned these sort of boring apartment buildings into these beautiful public murals. People actually do live there, so you kind of have to be careful not to, like, impinge on people’s privacy, but if you like murals, which I do and my friend who went with me also does, that’s worth a see. It’s about a 30-minute walk in a different direction, so , you kind of have to be up for a lot of walking to do both of those.

Annie: Yeah, well, but you could also, I guess, get an Uber to drive you there and drop you off.

Jennifer: Probably. I haven’t checked to see if there’s Uber in Chartres, but yeah, maybe. The buildings are just residential, so it’s a bunch of buildings and each one has a painting on the outside that is sort of themed for the region and for the city. It’s not anything ancient. I mean, they have one that’s sort of an homage to the sort of the farming area. There’s one that they apparently, I think, have some sort of perfume production, so these flowers that they harvest to make perfume. There’s one that has the maze, the Labyrinthe from Chartres. It’s a lot, soif you are interested in that kind of thing, definitely worth the walk.

Annie: And how long did you spend there?

Jennifer: 30 minutes to an hour again, and again another hour walking. We’re both Parisians and walking 30 minutes is not a big deal.

Patricia: Was there a bus that would, you could take there or did you not investigate public transportation?

Jennifer: Yeah, I suppose. I don’t get the impression that there’s a lot of public transportation in Chartres. Maybe a little bit. I think that there’s a bus that goes around the outer edge, where the original medieval wall used to be. I think I saw that on a map. But I don’t know about out into the suburbs.

Patricia: That might be a question when you go to the visitor office, which I always recommend, like your first stop when you get into town. They would have information on that, if there was any transportation, or Ubers or whatever to get around.

[00:15:01] The Advantages of Taking an Audio Guide

Jennifer: Saturday afternoon we did the tour of the upper levels of the cathedral, which again, highly recommend. Then we did an audio tour of the cathedral, which was in English. They have a tour in person in French that we did together, but I preferred the one in English because it was more focused, as you said. The guy who was giving our tour in French was not very balanced. He spent a lot of time on just the windows in the front. And the audio guide took you around to see more things, to get a more balanced view of the history of the cathedral.

Annie: Yeah, and as someone who does both audio guides and in-person tours, I can tell you, I forget half of the stuff I intend to talk about when I do an in-person tour. Because people ask you questions, you get distracted, something happens, whereas when you write an audio guide, you just know exactly, you know, “I’m going to talk about this, this, and this, and this,” you have to have a structure and… unless your in-person guide is very funny or very charming or something, audio tours tend to be more informative, usually.

Patricia: And I think one other criticism of the in-person guide was they weren’t using audio in-the-ear equipment, so the guide would be talking at a soft voice, couldn’t hear him…

Annie: Yeah, or he was walking away from the group and talking ahead, and the people in the back couldn’t hear him at all. Like, even if you have very good hearing, he wasn’t even turning around to address us some of the time, so yeah.

Jennifer: So get the audio guide. And that was the end. We got our luggage and went back to Paris.

Patricia: Okay. Very good. One other point on the tours, the only way to see the crypt, the under ground part, which is quite big, is a guided tour with a person. You cannot just walk down there on your own, which is unfortunate because it’s a vast area, actually. There’s interesting things down there that survived various fires over the centuries. So, it’s not a can’t-miss, but it’s nice to see it and that is the only way to see it.

Annie: Yeah, I think if we had been short on time and had… because we did this. If we had been short on time and had not seen it, it wouldn’t have been a tremendous mistake. I mean, it’s interesting but it’s not… I wouldn’t say it’s the most interesting thing to do there.

Patricia: No, I’ve been there multiple times and I’d never seen it before, this is the first time I had an opportunity to see it, so…

[00:17:28] The Chartres Cathedral: A Gothic Masterpiece

Annie: Shall we talk a little bit more about the cathedral and what the experience of visiting the cathedral is, even if you can’t do it the pilgrim way?

Patricia: Yeah, I think it’s fantastic. I mean, it is this very classic Gothic cathedral with I think the very best collection of stained-glass windows that tell the entire story of the Creation, from Creation to the final Judgment.

Patricia: And these stained-glass windows have always been intact, and so they’re from the medieval period and they are fantastic. So I mean, you have to work at it. You really have to get a good look at the paper and learn how to read them, pick one out, maybe use one as your example, but it is fantastic, you know.

Annie: And they are very different from the ones in the Sainte-Chapelle because the ones in the Sainte-Chapelle are made of very small motifs. So you have these kind of circular bits that tell a story, but they’re really small. It’s really hard to tell what the story is in the Sainte-Chapelle, whereas in Chartres, it’s sized better. You can understand the window with some help. Most of us are not, you know, trained to read stained-glass windows. Most of us would need help having things pointed out to us. But once somebody points it out to you, you can actually recognize it, whereas in the Sainte-Chapelle, whoo, you have to have serious binoculars. And Patricia wants to talk about the binoculars, so go, go.

[00:19:01] Bring Binoculars or Use Your Phone to Zoom In

Patricia: Bring binoculars. Yeah, in one of my other lives, I’m a birder, so I always have multiple binoculars. But I have learned, I have a very, a small pair of what people might call opera glasses, but they’re really quite good. I take those with me whenever I travel because there’s lots of buildings in France and Western Europe where things are very little. Little tiny things up high, gutter things, you know, cathedrals, stained-glass windows, carvings. And you will, even if you buy a cheap pair for, you know, €30, you’ll get your use out of them, so… Especially when you’re looking at stained-glass windows, so highly, highly recommend to take some kind of binoculars with you. And maybe just a monocular. Maybe your camera has a great zoom on it, but take something that will allow you to see, magnify things at a distance with reasonable quality.

Annie: Yeah, I agree. So I tend to use photography, you know, either a big zoom lens or even with my latest iPhone there, it has enough of an optical zoom that I could, you know, zoom into a specific part of the window that the guide was telling us about, and then look at it on my phone, which was, to me, easier than trying to look up.

Annie: And if you are used to binoculars, they are fantastic, but if you’ve never used binoculars before, I think we’re… Most people are more used to using a phone to take a photo of a thing and then enlarge with the phone. But whatever it is that you want to do, it is good to think ahead of time of how you’re going to actually see those things.

Annie: Or you could, I guess you could buy a book or, you know, there’s books you can… You carried a book as well, Patricia, with some very good professional photography. Yeah, there it is. She’s showing it to us. It just says Chartres Cathedral on the front. Oh, it’s the Malcolm book, yeah. I think the more time you spend ahead to kind of learn a little bit about this place, the better off you’re going to be.

[00:21:03]  The Santa Camisa of Mary Relic at Chartres Cathedral

Annie: And the other major attraction in the cathedral was the, what do they call it, the shawl of Mary. It’s called the Santa Camisaof Mary, which is supposedly the shroud that she wore when she gave birth to Jesus, so that’s another holy spot, you know, one of those reliquaries that people need to look at when they go in there. So I’m looking at a list of interesting things in the Chartres Cathedral, and they mention the Blue Virgin window, which I was able to see because it’s very beautiful and very blue, so it’s hard… you know, you can pick it out.

Annie: And the other one that they mention is the Zodiac window. That one I don’t remember seeing, or paying attention to particularly.

Jennifer: It’s actually near the Blue Mary. It’s just less obvious because it has smaller motifs.

Jennifer: It has the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and you kind of have to know what you’re looking for.

Annie: Okay, okay. But it’s good to know that it’s near there so that you can concentrate in that area, perhaps.

Annie: Okay, yeah.

[00:22:04] Chartres Cathedral Is Undergoing Renovations

Annie: And our guide was talking about the rose window a lot. Besides that, the overall feeling of the cathedral, because on this trip I spent, I went inside of Notre Dame several times. It was fully renovated. So Chartres, by comparison, felt a little dark. And they are working on it, right?

Jennifer: Yeah, it’s in the process of being cleaned. It was originally painted, and in the audio tour that I did previously, they said that about 70% of the original paint had been preserved, and that the remainder, they were sort of filling in and restoring.

Jennifer: And it’s kind of like an off-white paint and a white paint, and they have sort of made it look like bricks. I guess it is, it’s stones, but they make the stones look more uniform than they actually are. So there’s like a pattern painted in the ceiling, with this light-colored paint that was original. And once they get that finished, I think it’ll be as bright as Notre Dame is now. But it’s in process, as you say.

Annie: Right, so they had some scaffolding inside of the cathedral, andthey’re probably going to be working on the outside as well, which looks quite gray right now.

Patricia: Yeah, the courtyard was all torn up. But the outside is an important part to look at, at the cathedral also. I mean, the royal portal with all of the sculptures that go over the portal, fantastic, you know, storytelling and sculptures to, you don’t want to miss.

Annie: Yeah, and then in Notre Dame, you have biblical stories in wooden carvings, right? And they’ve been all restored and they look, they’re around the choir, and they are beautiful. In Chartres, it’s a similar idea but it’s in stone carvings, and they are really intricate. I always love to see those because they are typically a little closer to eye level, and usually it’s easier to tell what story they are telling. Typically, it’s going to be the stories of the life of Jesus, which is what you find in cathedrals anyway, right?

Annie: I’m looking through my photos of Chartres, it’s just a very beautiful cathedral. And myself, I could have spent two, three hours just in the cathedral looking at different details, and we kind of spent that much time almost because we had the tour.

Patricia: Oh yeah. We had two one-hour tours and then we were there a little before and a little afterwards. So yeah, you can easily spend three, four hours there. But I will also warn you, it was a cold day, the church is not heated at all. I think it was colder inside the church than outside. Be prepared for weather in… the same weather or worse, you know, at least dry, cold weather inside the cathedral.

Annie: Yeah, it was… it was damp. I had all my layers, and I was happy about that.

[00:24:57] The Plaza

Annie: The surrounding of the cathedral has this beautiful medieval houses, it’s a big old plaza with, it’s a very pleasant plaza. I’m sure they use it for all sorts of things. We had lunch right across from the cathedral. I can’t remember the name of the place, it was a lovely restaurant, wasn’t it?

Patricia: Yeah, we just stopped for like soup and coffee. We took some snacks also.

Annie: There’s a Chocolaterie Royale. Mm, num, num, num.

Annie: Yeah, it’s a beautiful little town, and the walk between the train station and the cathedral is very easy, like, 10 minutes, so it’s totally doable.

Patricia: Annie, it’s Le Café Serpent was the place that we stopped? That was right next to the cathedral. So a nice view, very nice inside, not very expensive, a good place to stop even just for coffee if you need a break.

Annie: Yep, yep, I enjoyed that.

Patricia: Yeah, it’s called the Salmon House because it has a carved wooden salmon on the outside. The visitor’s center is also a ancient timbered building, you know, that’s preserved.

[00:26:07] Street Mosaics

Annie: Right, and Chartres has this cute thing, they do like tiny little mosaics by the names of the streets. And so Rue du Lait, so Milk Road, has this milkmaid pouring milk into something. I took photos of a few of those. But a lot of the places where you see the name of the street, you’ll also have a little mural kind of showing you, I guess for people who wouldn’t know how to read, that would be good because they could see what the name of the street is.

Annie: And you know, I say that in jest but in Toulouse, in the metro in Toulouse, they have actually put images, that are standard images for each metro stop, because they’ve noticed that there are people who don’t know how to read who can’t navigate the metro, and to make it easier for them. If the station is called Capitole, they have a Capitole sign and on all the maps that they print, they also put the little Capitole sign as well as the name.

Patricia: Similar in the Marais, which is one of the older districts in Paris, a shoemaker is on, like, the corner of a street, and that’s where the shoemaker used to be, so…

Annie: Yeah.

Patricia: … it would be like a street sign.

Annie: Yep, yep.

[00:27:24]  The Musée de Vitraux

Patricia: I was going to mention, one of the things that we miss, and I have never been able to see, there’s a museum of stained-glass windows, the Musée de Vitraux. Personally very good. They have ateliers. They’ve got, you know, a lot that you can learn about stained glass construction, colors, pigments dyes. But never made it there, so reason to go back one more time.

Annie: Yeah.There is a big, kind of covered market area that was empty when we went. It’s very close to the tourist office and the Maison du Saumon. But I’m sure they have a lovely market regularly. And do they have a covered Halles? Let’s see.

Patricia: Yeah, that was Les Halles, I think. That was it.

Annie: Right. But that’s not covered. I mean, that’s… It has a roof, but it’s not like a closed…

Patricia: Oh, no. No walls.

Annie: No walls, yeah. Because they usually have… So they have Place Billard, yes, which they have a kind of a Marché de Plein Vent. Restaurant Bistrot des Halles. Marché et Halles, Chartres. Let’s see. Do they have a covered market, like in the same way we do in the rest of France? Place Billard. No, it looks like it’s just that one kind of semi-covered market.

Annie: It’s a bit different that way. From what I can find in two seconds googling, eh? Bistrot des Halles. Plan Carrefour Les Halles. Place des Halles. Huh.

Patricia: And there’s probably more in the summertime. It’s nice weather, I’m sure.

Annie: Yes, yes. All of that stuff is more active.

Patricia: And weekend, you know? You always… For the smaller towns, it’s good to go on the weekend because there’s a lot more stuff happening on the weekend, if you can. And Chartres is open every day, like from 8:00 to 7:00 or something like that. So you can always get in the cathedral unless there’s a special event going on.

Annie: Right. And the town looked really cute with lots of little boutiques. And I assume, Jennifer, it’s very busy in the summer with lots of people out?

Patricia: Yeah, I mean, it’s not as crowded as Paris, but there’s definitely activity.

Annie: Yeah, in the middle of the winter, there weren’t too many people out, obviously.

Patricia: Yeah, it was dead in the middle of winter.

Annie: It’s good. You have everything to yourself, you know? You just have to dress warm enough. And we didn’t have rain, so that was a good part of the weather. They have a very large mural to Jean Moulin.

Patricia: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Annie: Mm-hmm.

Patricia: Yeah, they had a couple of murals as we were walking around the area next to Chartres Cathedral.

Jennifer: It’s a pretty small town. I don’t think you really would need more than two days.

Annie: Right, right. Another one of these cute little signs outside Place de la Poissonnerie. They have a Gros Minet. What do you…?

Patricia: Oh, from Tom and Jerry. That’s… the cat is Sylvester from Tom and Jerry.

Annie: Right, so you have a side view of the cat, and he’s staring at the thing that says Place de la Poissonnerie, the Fish Market Plaza, I guess.

Patricia: We’ll have to put some of these pictures of what you’re talking about on your show notes. I took some pictures of some of the ones that we didn’t get to see earlier, so I’ll send you some of those.

Annie: Yeah, I think overall, Chartres is just a very cute town, well worth a day visit. It’s very easy to do.

Patricia: Yeah, I mean, actually there’s a train every hour from Gare Montparnasse. So you really don’t even have to plan that much in advance and you can just buy your ticket when you get there, or just look at the daily schedule and be flexible about your timing.

Annie: Yeah, the only thing you mentioned you had to book in advance, Jennifer, was a tour, right?

Jennifer: Well, that was the tour of the upper levels of the cathedral. And we just went in person on Friday afternoon and booked it for Saturday. This is through the Centre des Monuments Nationaux. And they do have a website. I looked this morning and there wasn’t any way to book it. But I’m pretty sure I looked before and there was a way. The website is kind of flaky this morning. So I would say check to see if you could book in advance on the website, even just a day or two in advance. But if you can’t, then you should be able to do it in person, assuming that you can speak a little bit of French or can sort of write it on Google Translate to make do. There were no English guided tours. I mean, they used to have a lot of tours at Chartres. And now they just have one tour a day of the upper and one tour a day of the crypt. That’s it.

Annie: Even in the summer?

Jennifer: No, in the summer they had multiple. I think it was like six tours per day or something. It’s just they were booked whenever we arrived on Friday. All the Friday tours were booked and the Saturday morning tours were booked, so we got in on Saturday afternoon.

Annie: Yeah, that’s often the case. Lots more people visit in the summer months or school vacation or long weekends. And so for those times, you really should look ahead a few days. You don’t need to book it two months in advance or six months in advance, and they probably can’t anyway. But you know, three, four days in advance, take a look and see.

Jennifer: Yes.

Patricia: And there is some American association that supports Chartres, and they also do tours. I don’t know if they’re the ones that do the English tours or not, but they’ve been instrumental in supporting Chartres over the years, so something to look up online.

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

[00:33:00] Trains in France

Annie: I just wanted to mention, just since I have both of you here and you are very good about using public transportation in France, that when you use trains in France, when you’re looking at the signs that show the trains arriving and trains departing, they are always color-coded. So, if it’s a green background display, these are the trains arriving, and if it’s a blue background display, it’s train departing. If you’re in a hurry and you’re looking for your train look for the blue screens.

Patricia: Also look for the time it’s leaving and the number, because if you’re looking for… if you’re at Montparnasse and you’re looking for the train to Chartres, it’s not going to say Chartres, it’s going to say Le Mans, because that’s the termination point. Don’t be confused by that. Just know that you’ll always be looking for the town you’re going to.

Jennifer: And if you booked on your phone, usually the app will tell you which platform to go to.

Patricia: If you enable notifications and you have a French phone.

Jennifer: Does it have to be a French phone?

Patricia: Yeah. Mm-hmm. They’re not going to send a note to a foreign phone, no.

Annie: Huh. Well, that’s unfortunate.

Jennifer: I’m pretty sure my phone is still set to American and it worked for me, but I can’t guarantee that it’ll work. I have a French phone plan and a French phone number, so maybe that’s it.

Patricia: That’s it. Yeah. No, SNCF is not global at this point. It’s barely French, you know?

Patricia: It works but you got to work with it, you know. The alternative that I recommend is Trainline, which is actually was developed in France, but now it’s owned by somebody else and it has various language versions and I think it’s the user interface is much better than SNCF. So, I just use it to look up data, you know.

Annie: Yeah. And you can import, if you bought a ticket, you can import it into your Trainline or vice versa, you know?

Patricia: The other reminder, on the train be sure you have your ID. Have your passport or some sort of official ID because they can ask you to match up your ticket with the person. Legally you have to have that.

Annie: Right, but I would recommend people take their driver’s license instead of their passport, because if you lose, if you forget your driver’s license or it gets stolen, that’s easier to replace than a passport.

Patricia: And I just carry a copy of most of these things, which is sufficient. You know, if they were to get picky, like, “Okay, fine. Send me a fine and I’ll show you I have a real one,” you know.

Annie: Yeah, because, I mean, we still have a problem with pickpockets and people… And also, a huge problem with people forgetting their stuff. Whenever I’ve ended up in trouble losing something, most of the time, it was my fault. I forgot it. I left it behind, you know? And when you’re tired and distracted by all these beautiful things around you, it can happen.

Patricia: Also the train to Chartres, there are no reserved seats. It’s not the TGV so you just get on board and grab a seat.

Annie: But when we went, there were plenty of seats. It wasn’t a problem.

Patricia: Week days there’s hardly ever any problem, you know, unless… Late Friday, early Monday perhaps when a lot of commuters might be going.

[00:36:14] Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Jennifer: All right. So, on a scale of one to 10, seeing that you’ve done a lot of day trips around Paris, how would you rate this one? You’ve been Auvers-sur-Oise, you’ve been to Giverny, you’ve been to Provins.

Annie: Provins. You’ve been to all these places. Where would you put Chartres?

Patricia: Well, it’s number one for Gothic cathedrals, no doubt about it. If that’s your jam, it is the best thing to go see. In all of France.

[00:36:39] Consider Staying Overnight in Chartres

Jennifer: Yeah. I would give it a high rating if you stay overnight. I would say just for a day trip, it’s kind of like 7 out of 10. Maybe 9 out of 10 if you’re going to stay overnight and see the light show.

Annie: Mm-hmm. So yeah, perhaps plan a little longer. Because there are places like Giverny, there’s not much point staying overnight in Giverny, right? Nothing happens at night.

Jennifer: Or Auvers-sur-Oise is great for a day trip. I wouldn’t want to stay overnight there. Or Provins, you could do two days because they do have a lot there, but I did manage to do everything there in one day.

Patricia: I’m definitely a one-day daytripper. I mean, I will leave at the crack of dawn from Paris and get back late night, jam in everything I can. So… But that’s just me.

Annie: Right, so if it’s the winter, like you mentioned at the beginning, if it’s winter, you can definitely just get a later return, and the light show might have been on. Like, if you go at Christmastime, they probably start the light show at 6:00 PM, and if your train’s not till 8:00 or 9:00 PM…

Jennifer: But in the summer, we were out until, like, 1:00 AM.

Annie: Oh, yeah.

Jennifer: So yeah, I would not have wanted to get on a train afterwards, even if they exist. Yeah I don’t think that. Yeah. No, no, in the summer, most light shows don’t start till 11:00, or fireworks, or things like that. It starts at 11:00. So by the time it’s done, it’s 1:00 in the morning, and yeah, it’s too late. You’ve got to go to bed. Go to bed, people. All right, did we cover it? I think we covered it.

[00:38:13] Bonus Stop: Chateau de Madame de Maintenon

Patricia: I was thinking, we didn’t have time, but another bonus thing you might be able to do is to stop before Chartres, because they get… So there’s a Chateau de Madame Maintenon, I think. Yeah, so there’s, her chateau is there. It’s very nice. I’ve been there once, too long ago. But you know, it’s on the very same train line, so you could get off there, spend an hour there, jump back on, go to Chartres, you know. I like to jam a lot into a day. So anyway, it’s something you can think about.

Annie: Yeah, yeah. That would be, hmm, that would make for a very long day. I guess if you leave Paris at 8:00, and you stop at the Chateau de Maintenon, you’re there by9:30 or something?

Patricia: Yeah. Go there for an hour and a half. Jump back on a train to Chartres.

Annie: I suppose you could.

Patricia: You could, yeah.

Annie: But it would have to be on a, you know, death march by Patricia.

Patricia: Not everybody appreciates my scheduling.

Annie: Wonderful.

[00:39:12] Conclusion and Future Plans

Annie: All right, ladies. Thank you so much for sharing. We had a wonderful time, both going to Chartres and talking about it. It’s definitely one of those places in France that has a lot of charm.

Patricia: Beautiful.

Jennifer: You’re welcome, and thanks for having us.

Patricia: Let’s do another trip.

Annie: Yes. We’ll plan another one. I still haven’t been to Provins.

Jennifer: Oh, we should do that.

Patricia: Ooh, did you see the bird show? The bird show is good.

Jennifer: On the weekends in the summer, they have a lot of activities that are worth seeing.

Annie: One of these days.

Annie: Merci, ladies.

Patricia: Okay.

Jennifer: Merci, au revoir.

Annie: Au revoir.

Jennifer: Au revoir.

 

[00:39:51] Thank You, Patrons

Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, P Miller and Savio Wong.

Annie: Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards.

Annie: And this week I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with one of my longtime patrons, Dawn, and it was very fun. So I really, you know, I create a relationship with my patrons,especially the longtime ones, and so thank you to them and to everybody who joins.

[00:40:42] Review Ile de la Cite

Annie: Somebody left this review of my Ile de la Cite VoiceMap tour this week. “Excellent tour, great pace, and so informative. Just like taking a stroll except you’re learning so much along the way. A great way to start exploring this area before circling back later to see each site.”

Annie: Yes, VoiceMap is like taking a private tour with a human guide who lets you stop whenever you want, picks you up again at your leisure, or even goes to a different point on the map and, like this person did, you can go back or not go back.

Annie: I mean, you could do it any way you like. You can stop the tour and go in the cathedral or in the venue, or not. It’s entirely up to you and you cannot do that with a live tour guide.

[00:41:24] Discount for Podcast Listeners

Annie: Podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours directly from my website, but you can also buy them on the app. If you buy them from me directly, it’s best, because I get to keep more of what you pay instead of giving it to Apple or Google, but it’s not instant if you buy them from me. It takes a day or two. So only do it that way if you’re not in a big hurry.

Annie: To use your tour code, open VoiceMap, tap Tour Code at the bottom right, enter the code, download the tour. It’s as easy as that. You don’t have to use your tour credit immediately, and you can even listen at home, so, I think it’s a pretty good deal.

Annie: If you are planning a trip to France and want expert help, you can hire me as your itinerary consultant. You can find all of my openings and the different levels and all of that at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

Annie: Usually I have openings within a month or so. Sometimes it’s more like two or three months, so don’t put it off too much, if you really want to do this.

[00:42:19] Paris Metro Tickets

Annie: Let’s talk about the Paris Metro tickets. If you’re planning to use public transportation in or around Paris over the next couple of years, there’s something important to keep in mind.

Annie: That familiar paper metro ticket, those little magnetic strip tickets, are being phased out, and I will tell you the truth, paper tickets are being phased out everywhere in France. The Toulouse metroservice doesn’t give those out anymore. They do kind of a plasticky card that is reusable instead of the throwaway tickets.

Annie: Ile de France Mobilités, which is the public transit authority for the Paris region, has announced that these cardboard tickets will gradually disappear as part of their push to move everything to digital. By summer 2026, which is coming fast, paper tickets will no longer be accepted on metros, RER trains, or Transilien commuter trains.

Annie: This phase out has already begun. It started inMay 2024. About half of all train and metro stations in the regions have completely or partially stopped selling magnetic tickets. And all stations will stop selling them altogether soon. I don’t know, you know, some places seem to sell them, some don’t, but don’t expect to get them anymore.

Annie: If you still have unused paper tickets, you’ll have to start using them now. Some buses and trams will still accept them, but only until May 2026 and only on older validation machines. After that, they’ll be invalid. You know, you have to find a machine that has a slot where you can put your ticket and those are going to get very, very rare.

Annie: Ile de France Mobilités says there will be a procedure to exchange unused tickets, but they haven’t announced how that’s going to work yet. I’m hoping most people don’t have thousands of those tickets in a drawer somewhere, and it’ll be fairly easy, you just use the ones that you have.

Annie: In the meantime, they recommend switching to digital options like the Navigo Easy pass, which is the one I recommend you do. The Liberté+ card, which is for locals. Or you can buy a single ticket via your smartphone. So, if you’re holding onto a stack of those little white tickets, this is your friendly reminder that you need to use them while you still can, and it’s not going to be much longer.

[00:44:36] Paris Honors Women in Science

Annie: Paris is honoring women in science. Paris has taken a bold and a long, long overdue step towards honoring women in science. Since 1889, the Eiffel Tower has displayed the names of 72 men, engineers, mathematicians, and scientists, engraved in gold along the edge of the first floor. It’s hard to see, but if you bring binoculars, which Patricia would strongly suggest that you do, and I do too, it’s a good thing to have, you will be able to see those names. So there are 72 men, but not a single woman. And that’s about to change. I even chat about that in my VoiceMap tour of the Eiffel Tower, which I recorded like three, perhaps four years ago, so it’s been a while, because it’s unconscionable that they didn’t think to include any women. It’s not like there haven’t been any women scientists. They just don’t talk about them, there you go.

Annie: So Mayor Anne Hidalgo, in partnership with the Societe d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, this is the company that runs the Eiffel Tower, and the Femmes et Sciences Association has announced an initiative to add the names of women scientists to the monument. A scientific committee will oversee the project to ensure that the additions respect the heritage of Gustave Eiffel’s masterpiece. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re going to do it right. I mean, they need to do it right.

Annie: One of the groups behind this push is called Les Quarante Soeurs d’Hypatie, named after Hypatia of Alexandria, a trailblazing mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher from the 4th century. Hypatia taught in Alexandria during a time of deep cultural and political change, and she became one of the earliest known female scientists in recorded history. Today her name stands out as a powerful symbol of women’s contribution to knowledge, often unrecognized but enduring. The names added to the Eiffel Tower will help rewrite that narrative.

Annie: They’ll raise awareness of the many brilliant women who shaped science and inspired future generations to see themselves in that legacy. At last.

[00:46:45] Tips on Choosing Restaurants in France

Annie: How do you choose restaurants in France? Okay, I wanted to chat about this because people… you know, I talk to visitors all the time, every day pretty much, and this is a question that comes up every single time.

Annie: How do you choose restaurants in France?

Annie: Somebody called Dana wrote this question on Facebook. ” I was listening to one of the older podcasts, and in it Annie says we should never go to a restaurant in a guidebook.” And this made her laugh, because I called out a particular guidebook that Dana has used frequently. So wondering where do you all get dining advice? We’ll be in Paris and Normandy this summer, and I don’t want to be locked in, but I want to have some options on my plan, because hungry teenagers. Thoughts? Thanks.”

Annie: Okay.

Annie: She didn’t specify what episode it was, but I have said in the past, and I probably will keep saying, that it’s not a great idea to just go to the restaurants that are recommended in the Rick Steves books, because they are sold to so many people that these places just get a lot of business without trying very hard.

Annie: And that’s, that defines touristy, you know. If you are in a place where it’s only going to be one-time dining, if they want to maximize profits, they’re going to make things as cheaply as possible and as easily as possible, because they’re never going to see you again. That’s just the reality. There are some people who are not going to try and maximize profits, but, you know, most people do, yeah. It’s just how it goes.

Annie: So I would recommend, if you want a guidebook to help you with your dining recommendations, perhaps use the Green Michelin Guide. It would be way better. And it’s also used by French people more, so, you know, it will adhere to standards that matter in France, okay? Because we are French.

Annie: That’s what we like.

Annie: But if I know nothing about the restaurants in a particular town, what I do is… And if I don’t have the Green Guide with me, which I have a copy, but I don’t carry it with me all the time, I read Google reviews, usually in French, because I’m French. I mean, English will do as well, and probably you can get AI translations of these reviews anyway.

Annie: And I do this a few days before I arrive. That’s the trick is don’t… If you’re going to be picky, don’t be picky right this second. Just look a few days before you arrive. I look for words like cuisine soignee, which means to do it carefully, to do it thoughtfully.

Annie: I also look, and I pay particular attention to whether or not reviewers say it’s best to reserve. If they don’t mention it, then probably it’s okay. But if they say you should reserve, then really believe them. And I do this a few days before, not six months before, okay? Because reserving a restaurant six months before is usually pointless. They don’t know if you’re really going to come and they don’t want to take your reservation. So most of the time they just want reservations within that week. The end.

Annie: Unless it’s, again, a very special restaurant that world-renowned blah, blah, blah, people book months in advance. That happens as well, but I’m assuming most of the meals you’re going to have in France are not going to be in that sort of place.

Annie: I don’t try ever the cheapest restaurants or the most expensive. Usually, if you’re going to go to the cheapest restaurant, it’s going to be pizza and kebabs, I mean, that’s fine once in a while, but, you know, you don’t want to eat like that. I go to the middle of the road kind of pricing.

Annie: These days in France, you really shouldn’t expect to eat lunch for less than 20. That’s really bottom dollar. And 30 is little bit better. Dinner will be around 50 probably for a Cuisine Soignée type of place. I don’t go to the most expensive ones because typically, they will take longer. If you go to a restaurant where you’re going to pay 200 bucks per person, you’re going to be there for three hours, and I don’t want to be there for three hours typically, especially when I’m touring.

Annie: It’s just, you know, too long. I do look at food photos online to see if anything is a put off to me because I have issues. Like I don’t like the frothy stuff they put at the bottom of the plate. It looks like spit to me. I don’t want it. I want nothing to do with it. Most people don’t mind at all.

Annie: They think it’s lovely. It makes it look cool, and I… no no no no, not me. Perhaps you have your own kind of issues with specific things. So do look at the photos, it can be informative. And I never ever schlep across town just to eat at a restaurant that I read about somewhere.

Annie: That is just not something I do, because, I guess I don’t visit France specifically for the food. If you visit France specifically for the food, then maybe it would make sense to do that. But I would only do that for something special emotionally, like something I have… Like if you went there when you were a kid or if your parents had their, you know, honeymoon meal there or something.

Annie: I don’t know. Something that has emotional resonance with you, but just because you read about it somewhere, I don’t care that much.

Annie: And I also keep in mind that it’s a fact that some restaurants are really, really good at getting reviews, while others don’t try at all. So, eh, true story, I was in a restaurant in the 10th Arrondissement, perhaps it was the 11th.

Annie: We were going to a show. So this is an area that has a ton of little theaters. It was a comedy show. And I was with my husband and my sister and her boyfriend. And the four of us went out to dinner after the show. We got a little tipsy. We had apéro, we had a couple of bottles of wine, we were all on vacation, ha ha ha, it was all fun, great.

Annie: At the end of the meal the waitress asked us if we would leave reviews. She got really pretty forceful. She grabbed my phone and showed me exactly where I should write my review. So some restaurants are a bit, you know, yeah.

Annie: And some restaurants are excellent, would never think to even mention that maybe they’d like a review, you know. And it’s a fact also that restaurants change hands very often. So ignore the older reviews. They don’t mean much. But if you know that in a specific town there’s a restaurant that’s been there for 30 years, there is a good reason why it’s been there for 30 years, okay?

Annie: Even if they’re not good at reviews, if it’s been in the same hands, the same team for 30 years, you can be sure that they’re doing something right. And in Lyon, for example, there are several restaurants that have been, you know, long running restaurants. And it’s worth trying those if you want to try some genuine French, kind of gastronomy without spending a fortune.

Annie: My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan who produced the transcripts and the audio.

[00:53:50] Next Week on the Podcast

Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about the beautiful city of Annecy in the French Alps, a place I had the pleasure of visiting quite recently. She has been there, too, and it’s absolutely beautiful, picture perfect place.

Annie: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.

[00:54:16] Copyright

Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

 

 

Subscribe to the Podcast

Apple Google Spotify RSS

Support the Show

Tip Your Guides Extras Patreon Audio Tours

Read more about this transcript

Episode Page 

Categories: Day-Trips from Paris, Loire Valley