April 29, 2025. Chartres, France

Sunday afternoon we left the house around 3, took the bus to the subway to Kipling and then the airport express bus to Pearson. Our flight was on time, and since we had only carry-on, we were out of Charles DeGaulle airport in record time. We jumped on the RER B train to Gare Montparnasse (hint – buy your Metro ticket online before arriving or you will line up for 45 minutes to get one), and the regional train to Chartres. All connections were perfect – in fact we hopped on a two-hour-earlier train to Chartres with no change fee – and checked into the hotel about 1:00 pm, 3 hours ahead of when we thought we would!

We washed up, enjoyed a coffee in the warmth and sunshine in front of the hotel, then grabbed a cab to the HomeBox storage to retrieve our trikes. A bit of fun: the driver let us off at a storage company – but the wrong one! Luckily it was just a fifteen minute walk to the right one, with a cookie stop at a boulangerie on the way. Let’s just chalk up our confusion in not recognizing we were in the wrong facility to the state of shock we were in, in November, when we left the bikes there after a five hour ride through a freak snow storm. The person on the desk recognized us from November, we had a few laughs about how horrible that day was, and then we headed up to the locker.

We assembled the trikes, and then found out that they don’t fit into the elevator, assembled. Arghhh! John took them apart, elevatored them downstairs, then re-assembled. It was a good exercise for remembering how to do it, anyway.

We had a lovely ride back to the hotel in the warm sunshine, enjoying the fully leafed out trees and spring flowers. Lilacs! Wisteria! Magnolias! Grape nyacinths! Irises!

At the hotel we replaced John’s front tires with new ones that we had brought from Toronto. The old tires were worn almost through to the tubes. We locked the bikes in the hotel’s conference room, and then we went for a stroll through the Chartres square to see THE CATHEDRAL. The videos of that, below, are 360 surround, so drag the cursor to look around if you like. Sadly, Chartre’s 1000 year old labyrinth in the cathedral is only exposed on Fridays so we were unable to walk it, we had content ourselves with standing on the starting point.

After that we had a massive nap – we were knackered and, besides, the French don’t eat until later when we headed out for a bit of dinner in a spot just past the cathedral. Duck liver foie gras salad for Patti. Paella for John. Then good-night.

The next morning (Tuesday) we cycled to Picassiete, a bizarre and fantastic creation by a single man, using broken pieces of crockery, to create a home and gardens, over 30 years. He was a municipal employee for the city of Chartres who worked as a roadman and cemetery sweeper. Picassiette is his labour of love.

On our way back downtown we stopped in at l’Eglise de Saint-Pierre.

The trikes were filthy from our snow-storm ride in the fall, and the chains were caked with three years of gunk, so we dropped in on a bike shop. He didn’t have time for us, but sold us a can of WD40 chain degreaser and recommended an InterMarche store with an attached car wash. “Just ride down there, turn right at the cinema, and carry on – can’t miss it.”

Never trust directions from a 17 year old.

That turned into a 45 minute ride, with no car wash at the InterMarche. Oh well. A kind couple told us about a coin wash not too far away, and it was great. Four euros for a couple of jet washes cleaned up our act. Easy ride back to the hotel. A bike rental shop at the train station pumped up our tires for us, and helped get John’s front wheels aligned. All at no charge. People are kind.

It was a big day, which we ended with a fine crepe dinner.