Chartres 12-17-15

Today we went out to Chartres, we've been once before when we had a house exchange with a family down in Antony, a suburb of Paris.  As I mentioned, we bought tickets yesterday so all we had to do was get to the train on time.  Since the sun rises after 08:00 getting to a 09:00 train meant leaving in the dark since the station was Montparnasse and it's clear across the city from us.
The trip out was interesting because it's all built up clear out to Versailles and then all country the rest of the way.  It's about an hour's duration and the countryside was a bit foggy this morning.   But the sun brightened up a bit when we arrived so our walk over to the cathedral was pleasant, and we were almost the only tourists to be seen.   But that bit of sun was almost the only hint we had all day and it was just a brief flirting gesture.
We spent the first bit of time on the outside of the North Portal admiring the Gothic doorway, so much over the top gothic carving, many figural representations.  Interestingly Chartres survived the French Revolution almost untouched.  Rather than destroying images, the revolutionists decided to blow it up and had procured the necessary powder.  But they were dissuaded by an engineer of the time who told them that it would create a pile of rubble that would take years to clean up and the streets of the city would be impassible for that period, so they rethought that plan.  Most of the damage occurred to the carvings that were readily accessible to people on the ground.  I wonder if this is the origin of the term to "deface" something?
Next we went inside and truth to tell it was much colder inside than outside, we could actually see our breaths inside, but not outside.  One of our major interests in coming today was the controversy surrounding the restoration and cleaning of the cathedral.  It began several years ago and involved the cleaning and repainting of what were originally polychromed surfaces.  The interior was so dark from the nearly 1000 years of accumulated layers of smoke from candle and incense burning as to be a mottled black, brown, and grey, quite sombre.  So they have cleaned off the grime, whitewashed the walls and columns and where they found previous polychrome, analyzed the paints and repainted in a manner that was supported by research.  What an uproar!  My personal opinion is that the restored part is very lovely and so what if the specific color is not exactly the correct hue.  Purists would want to outlaw any restoration whatsoever, while flaming revisionist would have gone for the Peter Max effect.  At any rate cleaning it up really lightens up the interior and lets its intrinsic beauty come through.
I climbed the bell tower to have a view of the city because it is far and away the highest point in the landscape, and the views are magnificent of the town and surrounding countryside.  Plus you get to see up close the stonework that is only imagined with binoculars or the naked eye.  Clear up the parapet next to the bells are carved vines with dragons and lions and other imaginary beasties, but the vines are carved out in full relief and twine up the indented flutes of the columns.  Clearly the dedication of the stone carvers to their metier is fully realized up here away from anything a pilgrim of yesterday, or today for that matter, would ever likely see.
After our visit we had a very nice lunch at a little restaurant away from the center (small town) where there seemed to be many locals and it was quite good.
For the afternoon we spent our time wandering through the old commercial center and observing several old medieval and middle age buildings.  At the end of the day we visited the museum of stained glass where they create new stained glass and restore very old stained glass creations before catching the train back to Paris.