France- Orleans and Chartres

Orleans is a city Southwest of Paris

It is famous for the house of Joan of Arc (can you see which one is joan's house?)

and the Cathedral of Orleans

The Catherdal has everything I would expect to see in a cathedral...

beautiful glass windows that depicts stories from the bible, or in this case the story of joan of arc.

confession chambers
and HUGE AS organs.

and If i am perfectly honest, my impression from the 3 cathedrals I've visited from this trip is that it's all very dark, almost hauntingly ghastly, not to mention the coldness in the churches. It's nothing like the nice central heated churches you find in NZ. I guess me not being a Catholic may affect my feelings towards cathedrals, but upon entering those buildings, I feel like I might attack by devils at any second ^^;

Later we visited the cathedral of Chartres. It's signature two high vaults were results of a fire which burnt down half of the cathedral, a second vault was thus built in the 'Gothic' archtecture style.

The very special part about this church is the use of light blue stained glass on Mary which was very rare when it was constructed. The blue was hence named "Chartres blue".

And ending on that note, our next destination take us to Paris! for real this time. (think i'll make that separate post) ^^