A day out of the city

One of the things Sharon absolutely wants to see while she's here is the Chartres Labyrinth which is on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral.

One of the things we wanted to show them is the Loire Valley Castles. If you recall from our family web page we had a great family trip to the Loire back in 2000.

We decided to offer to try and mix the two in to one day and they accepted...

Alexandra took the day off to join us and we were in front of their hotel at 09:00 ready to head off and out of Paris. We drove straight to Chartres and made pretty good time. We got there at about 10:30. We hit the tourist office first to ask the basic questions and get any maps or brochures they may have. They gave us the worst news they could have short of announcing that the cathedral itself was closed. Apparently the labyrinth, as it is on the floor of the cathedral, is always covered by chairs. The only day of the week that they remove the chairs is Friday. There are quite a few web sites which discuss the labyrinth and I don't recall seeing this rather vital piece of information on any of the sites. But there wasn't much we could do at this point. We visited the cathedral, which is breathtakingly beautiful and enormous, and contemplated the labyrinth on the floor through the chairs. However we couldn't actually walk the labyrinth which was quite frustrating.

After that relatively short visit, and many photos later, we visited a couple of gift shops and headed off for the Loire Valley.

As it was already quickly approaching the lunch time hour I decided we couldn't wait to eat until getting to the Loire Valley so we stopped off at Orleans. We got there at about 13:00 and, as I was quite hungry, I sped through town indvertently driving along the tramway tracks until I could get off them. We had a pleasant lunch at a café outside under a bunch of trees which kept shedding their flowers providing us with a bit of extra vegetables in our meals.

We got back in the car and headed off to the Loire. The castle I wanted to see this time was Château Chambord as this was probably the biggest one I hadn't seen yet. We got there at about 15:00 and walked around the grounds for quite some time, taking photos, before actually entering the castle. We then spent a couple of hours touring the insides of the castle. I was amazed at how well Alexandra participated without complaining too much especially after all the walking we had been doing. I personally particularly liked the dual spiral staircase, which was apparently designed by da Vinci, and which has the very fun effect of being able to look across at those who are on the parallel staircase.

After climbing up and down and all over the castle we stopped for a bit of ice cream before getting back in to the car. We drove straight back to Paris, without hitting too much traffic, and the Hartmans were in their room by 20:30. Alexandra and I headed home. Alexandra had a quick microwave meal, and I filled in an excuse in her cahier de correspondance as to why she had missed school. I felt we had an educational and historical excuse so I didn't feel too guilty. But she had to head off to bed as she does have school tomorrow.

I picked up a very quick pizza up the street and settled down to watch The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have tried to watch this on Friday nights and the rest of the family just never agrees. I was going to wait until father's day to oblige them but realised it might be a disappointment for everyone involved. As predicted it was certainly a disappointment for me. I had read all FIVE of the books in the totally incorrectly termed trilogy several times. I had also read the radio scripts and Douglas Adams' other books such as the Dirk Gently series. I have the BBC Radio Series on cassette and I have Douglas Adams reading the books on my iPod. I have the original TV series on VHS (and soon on DVD). I have read, listened to and watched all of these repeatedly. I believe I can refer to myself as a fan.

As was to be expected I was utterly disappointed in the movie. They had cut out several characters, several bits from the other scripts and radically changed many characters. How Ford Prefect, one of the two or four central characters, can go from being an incredibly English character (book, radio and TV series) to suddently being portray as a black American is left mysteriously unexplained. Actually quite a few of the parts suddenly were portrayed by Americans, including Arthur Dent's love interest Trillian. It was just too commercial, too trite, too commercial and utterly unlike the original concept formed, developed and evolved by Dougals Adams. I'm hoping they don't do a sequel.