Cahors / Saint Cirq Lapopie

This morning we sLept in and the spent time exploring the the Market in Cahors. While I walked around the market Khalid sat at a cafe and listening to a girl with a guitar sing what he imagined to be political protest songs because all the people at the Cafe had tattoos. I think she was just singing old Carpenters covers.

We left Cahors over the ancient bridge. It is only open to foot traffic and bikes, no cars. Today we are taking the high road to Saint Cirq Lapopie since the next day we leave along the river Lot. It was a nice relaxing ride through Oak forest with views down into the river valley every so often.

Saint Cirq Lapopie is amazing. We could hardly stop taking pictures. Basically it is an ancient town, built on the bluffs above the river Lot that has been made into a tourist area, preserved. People still live here but many have shops selling high end goods and crafts. The stuff is all made locally, high quality, but expensive. The lunch we ate was excellent (see picts) but definitely hard on the wallet. We met some guys from Michigan leading a group of kids in a middle school band. They are here to do a performance in a nearby town. The band is a mix of American kids and French kids. We saw the American kids laughing and walking through town eating pastries from the farmers market, while the French kids sat nearby looking surly and smoking cigarettes.

Despite all the tourists it is a relaxing place and the great scenery makes it well worth the stop. I am really looking forward to the ride along the river tomorrow.

Layover in Toulouse, Dinner in Cahors

We are at the hotel Terminus in Cahor, which is great! We finally have a huge room, by French standards anyway, and the woman at the front desk was very friendly. There is also a little yellow tabby at the hotel named Nougat.

On the way here we had a stop over in Toulouse, so we went out and explored the town a little. It is a pretty cool city, much different that than the towns we have seen so far. Much more diverse. Much busier too. We explored some of the alleyways and shops, then stopped in a large square where I had an ice cream and espresso. Here are a couple snaps.

Proof things are more expensive in France, their Dollar Stores are two Euros, which of course is over three dollars.

We had dinner at a Moroccan restaurant across the street from my party.

Lourdes

As I write this we are on the train from Lourdes to Cahors. It is a beautiful, rolling landscape, passing by small villages, green and brown fields, and small forests. We ate sandwiches of bread and goat and sheep cheese that we bought in Argeles-Gazost.

This morning I had my SECOND! hotel incident of a cleaning woman walking in on me in my hotel room. The first, which I forgot to put in the blog happened in Mimizan, where luckily, I still had a towel handy as I walked out of the shower and this morning I just got my pants on right before she barged in. What is with French maids? I am not even in finance.


This morning, after grabbing a coffee near our hotel, we rode the bike path to Lourdes. We had a couple hours to wait for the train so while Khalid hung out and had a coffee, I rode sown to the Grotto. This was indeed an interesting place. I do not know the history of pilgrimages to Lourdes so I will let you look that up and just describe what I saw.

There is a Cathedral near downtown and right along the river. It is massive and more impressive because it seems to grow right out of the rock it is built on.

I did not get to go inside because I had my bike (several guys scolded me in french for having the bike on the grounds, but given they were not clergy, and did not have a higher authority behind them, I continued, though walking the bike). Outside there was a huge line of people, along the rock the church is built upon (no religious pun intended) waiting to go inside a cave. I have no idea what goes on in the cave but as they exited they would place both hands on this wet looking part of the cave wall, just under statue of the virgin Mary.

After pausing under the stature they would obtain these 3-4 ft long white candles and head to an area with large enclosed carts each with 50-100 candles burning. I think the candles must be in remembrance of or as a prayer for someone.

I think Lourdes is a place of purported "sightings" of the virgin and that is the reason for the masses of people visiting. I do know that many people come here to get healed. I saw lots of people in wheelchairs, and as I was making my way to the front of the church I saw a group of Scottish men, pushing a guy in a wheelchair (he seemed to have a neurodegenerative disease). As they passed I overheard "... well of course he is, he (the guy in the wheelchair) was just dunked in cold water". I snapped a few more photos at the front of the church, before being scolded again about the bike, so I headed out of the grotto. Just at the exit two teen boys on skateboards went zipping through the entrance and into the grotto, drawing irritated stares from a nun dressed in white dress and huge brown army boots.

As I left the grotto and entered the street and shops, things became more frommagey. There were rows upon rows of shops selling all kinds of religious items, mostly all kinds of representations of the virgin Mary. My favorite are these plastic water bottles in the shape of the virgin Mary. I thought about getting some as gifts but they are way to bulky and heavy for the bike.

So as I finished writing about my experience at the grotto and cathedral in Lourdes, a Christian Syrian woman from Australia began talking with me. She is traveling with her husband seeing friends and family. I asked if use had visited the grotto and cathedral. She said, "oh, yes!" and explained that all her life she dreamed of going to Lourdes".

The Tourmalet

Today we rode the famous Col d'Tourmalet. It was actually much easier than we thought primarily because we left at 6am to beat the heat. Reached 93 C or so today.
(oops, thanks, though it felt like 93 C, it was actually only 93 F)

The route is shown (left) though it may have some problems with google maps.
The start of the ride was my favorite actually. We begin in a valley that becomes narrower and narrower as you go up in elevation, with a river just off to the side of the road. We often had sheer cliffs to our left and sheer drops to our right.

As we got higher up towards the peaks it opened up and there were large grasslands and cattle grazing.

In fact, just as Khalid was about to catch me on the climb the cattle (team Sigman) began walking across the road and blocked his path. Later on the descent he was also almost taken out by a sheep and a donkey.

Cows on their way to block Khalid

The peak

Arrived in Argeles-Gazost

Beautiful ride from the train station in Lourdes to our hotel in Argeles-Gazost. Still warm even at midnight. It is supposed to be 93 F by afternoon tomorrow so we are getting up at 530am to start riding at 6am.

Here are some photos from the town. The first is the view out our hotel window, another is a church around the corner at dusk, which by the way is at 1015pm.

Some images on the ride from Ainhoa to Saint Jean

Stream in hills at feet of Pyrenees

Narrow street on ride to Saint Jean

I was on my own at this point. Khalid wanted to do more riding along this scenic river while I wanted to stay on a smaller road that went up higher and had views of the villages. When I finally got back down to the river I was pretty worn out and hungry. I had carried this melon in my bags for two days and finally decided to stop to eat along side this river almost at the entrance to the town of Saint Jean Pied de Port.

Our hotel in Saint Jean Pied de Port

Waiting on the train

Turns out the train that accepts bikes does not leave until 630pm. So we have a few hours to wait, in the heat. I just had some ice cream and am now sitting in a park in Pau center with a view of the Pyrenees and watching these two guys play a game that looks like Bocce ball. I am also updating this blog and uploading pictures.

The Col d'abisque was a great ride. Beautiful landscape, streams, forest, craggy looking peaks, and even sheep and cattle at the top. There was also unfortunately a parking lot but fortunately a cafe with Crepes. I had nutella.