Sights and Sounds Ninety

The weather has turned for the worse today with rain greeting us when we woke up. It is awfully cold too especially for May 1st. Our plans today took us away from Paris. We decided to take a train ride an hour outside the city to the town of Chartres. The train was a SCNF commuter train which was a double decker. We sat at the top and watched the french countryside go by. Even though the weather was a little dodgy the views were gorgeous. Our eyes were met with fields of yellow flowers that we guessed were mustard. When we arrived at Chartres it was very quiet. Today is a public holiday and most everything is closed (main reason we left Paris as most tourist locations were shut). We wandered up towards the Chartres cathedral which is the main focal point of the town. It was quite spectacular.
We decided to eat at Le Cafe Serpente before venturing around the town. Dusti had a mushroom omelet and i had a lamb (yes i know i already broke my vow to eat the little guys again but i swear this was my last time...i just saw someone else order it and it looked too good).

We took a quick look at the iPhone map and decided to walk around the town. We came across some pretty cool sights. The Abbey of St. Pierre and Chartres Cathederal were religious sites dating from the 7th century. Monks defended St. Pierre's at that time. A fire destroyed most of Chartres i the early 1100's. "New" reconstructions of the abbey and cathedral began shortly after the fire.
Here is a photo of St. Pierre's belltower.

We walked down towards the little canal and took in some more of this medieval town.

The rain began to fall so we headed inside the cathedral and it was simply amazing. No pictures could do it justice.

There was also one little fella that caught our eye. He follwed his master (not in the photo) around on command. we felt bad for the little pup as his master seemed rather mean.

We caught the train back to Paris and made our way back to our flat on the 3rd Ard. I did see another sweet piece of Paris street art. Time for bed now. I'll give you details of our evening at the local Moroccan restaurant, Chez Omar, tomorrow.