We left Sete at 8 am and drove to Carcasonne, a walled city that was used in the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. It is one of the most visited sites in France, so it was good that we arrived early (around 9:30). We walked the streets and around the outer walls. While I was looking at the castle, a cat come out of one of the breaks in the stones, walked the stone wall to another area, and then jumped down. It was very impressive. It was the first I’d seen a cat since I’d been here. Later, while walking around the town, I saw another one that ran away from others that approached, but I meowed at it, it meowed back and let me pet it. I met up with several different groups from our tour and ended up having a chocolate crepe and coffee with Jack. I’m glad I had the crepe here in France, but think that my crepes and chocolate sauce are just as good.
From there, we drove to a rest stop for lunch. If there’s a cafeteria or a sandwich shop, from now on, it’s going to be the sandwich shop. I payed 8euro for one of the worst pieces of lasagna I’ve ever had. From there we drove about an hour to Lourdes.
Lourdes is in the Pyrenees and could be very beautiful if it wasn’t for all the souvenir shops and hordes of people. My only comparison for the crowds is Disneyland on a holiday weekend. I’ve never seen so many souvenir shops in one place, most of them with the same merchandise. We walked towards the grotto and were overwhelmed with the crowds. Looking at the queue, Heidi and I decided to leave. We went into the basilicas (both the old and the new) and started to walk the stations of the cross. It’s on a steep hillside next to the basilica. At each station, there appeared to be a service going on and one couldn’t get past the crowd. Heidi felt uncomfortable plowing through, so we turned around and headed back to the town for a cup of coffee. We found a place not to far into the crowds, bought a cappucino as take away and walked to the bridge. About 30 yards away, the silence is noticeable and appreciated. After returning to the bus, Stephen from Australia pointed out that at the Catholic Alliance I could buy a candle (about 18 inches long) for the candlelight procession for only 75 cents, it’s the best deal in town. So that’s what I did.
We ate dinner in the hotel, it was a 4 course meal. 1st course was a soup, I thought it was mostly lentils, but someone else thought fish. 2nd course was a piece of pizza about 2x3 inches long. The main course was a large Gorton’s fish stick (at least that’s what it seemed like), and a cauliflower gratin (that was very good). Dessert was profiterole, only with chocolate sprinkles instead of chocolate sauce - very good.
After dinner, about 10 of us went to the candlelight procession in town; the service started at 9 p.m. Howard wanted to stay back, so Elaine and I went together.
We went to the square in front of the basilica. The pathways up to the top basilica were lined by folks with candles and along the sides of the square were people in chairs with candles. We were standing in the front row, along side Kaz and Monique and had a very clear view of the entire thing. They started a procession of a statue of Mary inside a lit box with poles. It went from the front of the basilica, through the square to who knows were. Coming from the grotto area we could see a lot of people making their way away from the grotto, going to we don’t know where. After about ½ hour, the box with the statue of Mary in it came back and it appears that those people we saw walking away from the grotto were people in wheel chairs being pushed by their supporters following the Mary box. The square filled up with thousands of wheelchairs. No exaggeration. In the meantime, they’ve had a service going on where we went through the stations of the cross, in 6 different languages. After 45 minutes we’d only gotten to the 5th station, so I told Elaine we could go whenever she felt like it, and we headed back to the hotel. The only thing I wanted to see was what was going to happen with all the wheelchairs. I wanted to know if it was going to be like a Benny Hin healing service, or did they just get special treatment? I’d prefer to think it was the second. Not that I don’t want them healed, I just don’t want it to make a mockery of healing. (I found out later, the bishop gave them a special blessing.) The real miracle was that my candle stayed lit the entire walk back to the hotel.
My hotel room was tiny and cold with no discoverable thermostat. Standing in the bathroom, I could not fully extend my arms. To keep from freezing, I placed my coat under the covers, on top of my legs.
No comments:
Post a Comment