After having done a lot of driving and a late first night in Paris, the Karolers enjoyed a late morning at the apartment. Karol and Keane, of course, did their regular run around town followed up by floor exercises. Soon after, Naomi, Karol, and Michał went to a nearby copy shop to fix printing mistakes (one page was missing from the score of Down to the River!). The three met up with Carlyn for a café crême and the small group also grabbed sandwiches for everyone for a brunch at home. The group ate and relaxed a bit before a noon rehearsal that we held to prepare for our concert at the Chartres cathedral later that day.
The view from our apartment in Paris was pas mal du tout!
We left around 1 pm and took a local metro train before transferring over at the Montparnasse station. We had some trouble getting tickets but Naomi and Carlyn were able to go up to the window and purchase the correct fare for the regional train, different from the metro or even the farther-reaching RER trains.
After our train ride, which lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes, we made arrived in Chartres (fun fact: Carlyn insisted on calling the town Chartreuse). We checked the return train schedule, just in case, as there was a railroad workers' strike going on in France and some services were interrupted. We then walked to the church in the hot afternoon sun, which Bowe did not appreciate too much.
The cathedral itself was easy to find as it towered over the entire city. It was as huge as it was beautiful. Once inside we took the space in while waiting for the music program manager. After a short greeting, we were led to nearby courtyard where we had a little bit of time to prepare and rehearse.
Inside the enormous Chartres Cathedral.
Our concert started promptly at 5 pm and lasted just under forty minutes (Bowe clocked 5:37 pm as the official end time). The cathedral's music manager was happy with our program and – considering there was only 7 of us – I think we did pretty well. We, unfortunately, do not have any recordings from the concert but we will cherish the memory. All in all, we also had a pretty large audience, probably between 50 and 100 people sat down to listen to our short program!
A banner picture in front of the cathedral after the concert.
After the concert, we made our way back to the train station. Feeling a little hungry, we stopped over at a Kebab place and treated ourselves to a cheap meal. The train ride back took 1 hour and 10 min. For the first 20 min of the ride we were pleasantly entertained by a young French couple that audibly displayed a lot of flirtatious affection and had as laughing the entire time. After they left we had a quiet rest of the ride.
We made a quick stop for kebabs before catching the train!
After another transfer to the local metro, we walked back to the apartment where we met Scott, who finally arrived – albeit sans Marcus who was not able to get on his standby flight and was due to arrive the next morning. Not much later, Sarah joined us and our quintet – Naomi, Sarah, Bowe, Karol, and Scott, rehearsed Byrd’s Mass for 5 Voices while Lena and Keane went down to the store to buy groceries for the next day.
Having had enough adventures for the day, the group decided against going out bowling, and while Keane and Naomi snuck out for a night cap, the rest of us headed to bed.