Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2008
Edit Blog Post
day 3 and 4 of petite pilgrimage
so after the abba evening i was pretty tired and didnt get out on the town until about 10am the next day.
and you know, the problem with having a town centered around a religious site, is that, theres not much else to see or do.
except go up one of the pyrenee mountains in a gondola.
holy crap it was insane. i have some cute pics of the town.
what made it worse though is that it was a really hot day and being stuck inside a moving gondola thats windows dont open...for liability reasons, with a ton of people who dont speak english and assume your irish cause your hair is turning red in the sun, gets hot..
so while i enjoyed the gondola, i was happy to get off it.
afterwards i grabbed a pain du chocolat and ate breakfast under saint michaels gate.
which may or may not have been socially acceptable. i couldn't tell from the looks i was getting.
i then went back inside the basilica just for one last awe inspiring look and walked the forest loop in the nice bright sunshine.
it was a nice
quiet day at the grotto cause it was a sunday.
not like theres any reason to go to a church on a sunday. stupid katie.
oh god the people were crazy, i'll never understand this need to push people out of the way.
the monuments not going anywhere. just relax.
my god.
anywho after lunch i went to the allllll exciting musee de ciree.
thats wax museum for those of you not partaking in your studies anymore...
this wax museum is famous though because it has a huge exhibit of the last supper.
complete with pews from the basilica for you to sit in awe of it.
anywho im like the only one in the creepy museum and im listening on the headphones to each thing in french in an attempt to learn more vocabulary.
although where im going to use religious french vocab in life, im not really sure. either way heesus kreese and i were learning.
so first off the museum is 6 stories high.
the first floor outlined the story of bernadette and lourdes.
it was kind of creepy because i dunno if i mentioned this or not but they exhumed bernadettes body more than once...each time
finding it perfectly in tact.
and now its permanently on display in a glass coffin.
like snow white.
i saw it.
its gross.
anywho they had the wax version of it which was just as creepy. but whats worse is they had her posed in one scene on her death bed with like sores and sickness all over her face and the voice on the casette talked like a femal darth vader, but then when you turned around she looked like a 16yr old child lying in the coffin.
must of been all that holy water she bathed in....
anywho the second floor starts with the story of jesus and has the nativity scene, his travels, etc. nothing too impressive except for the hillarious town scene where jesus is riding through on a donkey with flowing blonde curly locks of hair yet everyone else in the town is black and hairy...
im sorry but wasnt jesus born in the same place?
yet he's blonde and white....
anywhoooooooooooo
then the third floor.
aka the crypt keepers lounge
it was the scene of the crucifixion of chirst, and i'm not one to get scared by wax figurines....
but it was totallly creepy.
first off im by myself in a sea of wax figurines that are just begging to move, then on top of that this floor was completely set in dark mood lighting...aka the dark. and had thunder bolts everywhere that would crash and light up and this was the only light on the wholllllle floor!!!!
and everytime they lit up all you saw was dying jesus, life size on a cross in a 3d like stance comming at you.
i didnt wander long on that floor....
then upstairs is the all mighty resurrection....
ok so its an empty cave like area and when you step into it, a solar system of lights turns on and its sooooo bright it actually does leave you temporarily blinded. anywho jesus is there in white linens hanging from a string in the ceiling.
except this time he has brown hair.....
its kind of pretty and yet completely wrong all at the same time.
then the last floor of sculptures is the all mighty last supper.
it really is actually impressive
they spent a lot more time on this then the rest. so i sat and listened and enjoyed
then i went to the top of the building which is there little souvenir stand
oh yay
and bought some trinkets there while the lady spoke german to me....yeah whatev
after that experience i meandered down to the boardwalk to get some gelato
its so delicious.
i sat on the river bank for the afternoon tanning and eating my gelato while feeding the little sparrows old baguette. they're very tame. they came right on my towel and everything.
we were having fun...
that night i met up again with the crazy youth kids and just had dinner in a cafe that was nothing special just chicken that gave me food poisoning.
yeah that felt great all night on the bathroom floor.
day 4
so the previous night i had agreed to meet the kids at the basilica where they volunteer
cause i had nothing else to do until my train at 3
that day they were helping out in the sacred baths and they asked if i wanted to help too and well, sure why not. i love bathing old people.
so i did. i helped old and disabled people immerse themselves in the sacred water for a couple hours.
im so cool.
it was actually really fun. the people there were so nice and sweet and as soon as they found out i wasnt irish, i was canadian they thought that was just lovely.
around 1 i left and said goodbye to the kids and lourdes and felt that i sufficiently knew my way around town well enough to walk to the train station.
what did we learn the first day??? just take a cab.
but no. 1.5 hours later, two french ghettos, a van full of vagrant workers, and a stop at the tourist bureau later
i got on my train 😊
which i actually had a seat on this time so yay bonus
in fact the whole 12 hours home i had 4 seats and a table alllll to myself
of course when i got back it was very dark and the guy who comes on the overhead to announce where u are was speaking awfully fast that night and i almost got off at the wrong stop until this couple beside me stopped me.
which apparently was funny to the whole train cause they all laughed at me.
and felt the need to inform me that i was at my stop as i walked out the train.
but whatever. i got over it.
and yeah that was my trip
since then i've just been doing laundry and getting situated back home
i went to my fav garden yesterday and talked to my goats, rid the carousel, etc.
i am missing the friends i made here last month though
this month theres nowheres near as many people here
instead of 10 levels theres only 7
and instead of 20 ppl in my class theres 8
i guess i'll learn more this way, but i miss knowing where everyone is and whats going on cause a lot of people at the foyer this month are spanish. like 90% of them
and my espanol c'est ne pas bien.
so that kind of sucks. but whatev, i'll learn
i do know two girls in my class though from last semester, kat and madeline, so thats fun. we enjoy lunches
anywho thats all i have for now
much love
k
oh oh oh ps...the reason i said Foret in the last couple entries is because i feel as though lately i'm experiencing all of my life in the third person...like forest gump. except in french its foret gump.
that is all
Advertisement
Tot: 0.328s; Tpl: 0.032s; cc: 11; qc: 51; dbt: 0.2352s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb