Today we took a roadtrip to visit the spectacular city of Chartres, which is north of where we’ve been in Orléans and SW of Paris. This beautiful, walkable city blew us away!

They have a light show there that plays every evening with the old buildings as the backdrop to display artistic images. We had a really good lunch there and enjoyed walking around this 13th century cathedral.

Then this happened on the way back to Orléans:

It was not our fault and nobody got hurt! It happened at low speed in a roundabout where someone turned right in front of us from the inside lane (we were in the outside lane) and then a delivery truck rear ended us a second later. We also exploded two cups of coffee inside at the moment of impact.

Neither of the other drivers spoke any English and our French was lacking for this type of event. We all ended up back at the car rental agency to sort it all out and we got a new rental car. Fortunately, we opted for the comprehensive insurance and Avis will sort this one out after agreeing that we were not at fault.

This was not the type of adventure we were hoping for, especially after our fun day in Chartres, but we are just thankful that everybody walked away safe. This is one reason we love to take the trains and trams here in Europe!

We’re hoping for less adventure tomorrow when we continue our roadtrip to a couple of lovely chateau towns to the west of Orléans.