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".