Pulling the Pilgrims

I went to Lourdes today with April. It was a beautiful day with temperatures close 70F. We caught the 11:16 train and got to Lourdes at around 1:30.

When we first got to Lourdes, we went to find the tourism office. The tourism office was housed in a two story glass building. It was the best tourism office I've been to yet. We got some info about Lourdes and asked the lady if we could use her computer to find our hotel. April looked for the address and told the lady what hotel it was. The lady knew instantly and told us which way to go. We were both surprised that she knew because the first thing we noticed about Lourdes was that there were a bunch of hotels everywhere. (I wikipedia-ed Lourdes yesterday and it said that Lourdes has the second most hotels in France, right after Paris. Quite amazing for a such a small town!)

We exited and found our hotel with not too much difficulty. The hotel was a dinky place. It was kept clean, but the place was a bit old. However, it wasn't too terrible considering it was a two star hotel which we only paid 20 euros each for. That night though as we were sleeping, it got really cold. There wasn't a radiator like most places I've stayed in. Instead there was a heater that needed to be turned on. Unfortunately we did not know that until the next morning.

Well we checked in. Then we had some lunch. I had the express formula which was a salad, roast chicken with fries, and a flan. April had a Niçoise salad. After lunch, we followed the crowd and went to the grotto. It was so hot and there were so many people. That is a lot of old people (and of course young too). The old folks sat in blue carts as younger people pulled them. It was really like we were on a pilgrimage.

We stopped to take some photos and a nice French middle aged woman asked us if we wanted a picture together. She took our photo and we thanked her. The next thing we did was enter the church and admired all the beautiful mosaics. There were twelve, just enough for the stations of the cross.

To keep things short:
- We went up the side ramp things and went into two chapels. I was amazed to see the church and chapels all stacked up on each other.
- We filled our glass bottles we had purchased with water from the grotto. There were multiple spouts from which one could get water. The water was quite good to drink.
- We left the pilgrimage area and walked through Lourdes. We saw many more hotels and many more gifts shops.
- It was getting dark, so we went to find dinner. We ate Vietnamese food. The lady that sold us our food was quite talkative about how her family and how she got to Lourdes. It all started with me asking her how long she was in France.
- We went back to our hotel and ate dinner there.
- Then we went out again and I took some night shots of Lourdes. None of which were worthy of being posted on blip.