Next stop: Chartres

Tomorrow morning I'm off again! My first evening's stop will be Chartres, home of the famous cathedral and even more famous internet cafe full of pimply adolescent boys. This time, instead of popping for a hotel, I'm going to try couchsurfing.  The idea is to connect low-budget travelers to other folk of dubious moral standing so that the traveler gets a free couch to sleep on and both parties are enriched by the cultural exchange.  I'm scheduled to surf another couch in Orleans on Thursday. Assuming I'm not taken captive by either of my hosts, I should arrive at a new farm in Vasselay on Friday.

Check out my route on a lovely Google map. Blue tacks mean I stayed with friends/family for awhile, green tacks mean I was on the road, and the little houses are the farms! You will probably have to scroll east to see France, because the map seems to want to show the middle of the Atlantic. If the little guy here doesn't work at all, try the bigger map.

View Larger Map

I promise to put more pictures up soon, but for now, my photo card reader is acting up. However, I did manage to start a companion site to the blog on Picasa. It has one lonely album of pics of my first week in Paris. More to come!