Blogs from Lourdes, Midi-Pyrénées, France, Europe - page 2

Lourdes. Continuing westward on Friday morning, we entered the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains south of Toulouse, which mountains define the border between southwestern France and northeastern Spain. There were serious melts of snow in the mountains and the rivers flowing northward were in heavy spate. The Riviere Gave de Pau was in flood through Pau, to the west. The weather was quite cool and a misty rain was falling as we entered Lourdes, city of Sainte Bernadette. In 1858, a girl named Bernadette claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary – Our Lady of Lourdes - who directed her to a natural spring that arose in a small grotto at the foot of a hillside. This grotto and spring are said to possess miraculous healing powers and they are visited by millions of tourists and ... read more

Well, here I am again after the slowest of blogging starts. I am slowly trying to catch up although I must say that Jeanette probably took the best pictures with her fancy camera and none of them have yet been downloaded to my computer. That will be done when we return to Calgary unless I make an attempt before that. We are about to leave Lourdes where we spent the night and head for Carcassonne, the medieval walled city, via Toulouse. It was an unexpectedly wonderful evening as we attended an extraordinary event. We first visited the Grotto where Bernadette claimed to have had visions of the Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus. She was since made a saint after severe scrutiny from the Roman Catholic Church. Lourdes is one of the foremost pilgrimage sites for Roman ... read more

I was getting into the swing of things, I really was. I was taking the bad with the good and enjoying everything I could. I was befriending strangers and hiking foggy mountains. I was sleeping on trains and feasting on unrefrigerated cheese. I was making plans and treating myself to excursions. I was caught by surprise by the half-way mark of my Adventure and worried that two more months wasn't enough. Sweden, Norway, and Finland werer beautiful, and Berlin was fun, and then-- I don't know exactly what happened. It's like I tried to sweep a tablecloth out from underneath a setting of dishes but didn't get it quite right, so all the dishes went crashing to the floor. It might be that I started to get too comfortable, formed expectations, and had those expectations smashed ... read more

Stopped at Casteleret on the way to Lourdes. They were having a local Saturday flea market. Bought original oil paintings from the local artist, murano glass, and rosary beads for Lourdes. Lourdes was packed with people visiting this holy site where Bernadette saw the vision of Mary. Cart after cart was brought in of the ill visiting the site. We arrived just before mass so were able to talk with some of the priests (only in French though) and attend a little. At the holy spring, people were filling jugs, drinking, and washing with the water. There were candle after candle of prayer candles burning. Cauterets is a little ski village in the Great Pyrennes. There were hikers and rafters there that Saturday afternoon. We walked around the village and sampled the local food. A raging ... read more

Our original intention was to have a very short driving day to Pamplona, stopping at a couple of Rioja towns in the process. But after a chance remark about Lourdes, we looked and saw that we could detour through France, see Lourdes, and proceed through the Pyrenees, seeing Andorra on the way (we realized it was unlikely that we would get another chance to visit that country). It meant visiting Pamplona without spending the night, but that turned out to be a good choice. We started our day with a tour of the Marques de Riscal winery. Our hotel was the luxury hotel on the grounds of the winery, designed by Frank Gehry (designer of the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum). The tour was entirely in Spanish, so I did not understand a word of it, but Lucie ... read more