It seems prayer has become a part of my life again. It really never left but when you are faced with hotels still closed for the season, chambres d'hotes not easy to find and nasty cold wet weather then, well, it is good to have prayer in your life.
Our journey from St. Palais towards Lourdes found us happily ensconced in a hotel (with wifi) mid way along the route in Oloron Ste. Marie. It was so wet and Shane was so tired from driving that we fell exhausted in to bed. Did I mention that we tried to take a couple of mountain passes only to be turned back by snow on one and bad roads on the other. Yep.... snow. Now when you are travelling on a narrow road in the fog with no guard rails, straight down and straight up and with opposing traffic....and it starts to snow.... well, the biggest question in our minds was how were we even going to turn around. Fortunately there are actually people living up there and the (one) driveway gave us the opportunity to escape,
A trip that should have taken a couple of hours turned in to a full day by the time we were ready to stop. Then, for the second time on this trip, the hotel we had plugged in o PG turned out to be closed. No tourist information and nobody on the streets. Good thing the next hotel was open.
Anyway, enough of that. The next day we woke to sunshine that just got better during the day. We checked out the Lourdes Live Feed (yep I'm not kidding) web site and saw a sea of umbrellas. By the time we arrived it was hot and sunny. It wasn't busy either which meant we had lots of opportunity to wander along the pilgrims walk, visit the grotto and the churches, light candles, pray and just absorb the intensity of this amazing place. It is humbling to watch the pilgrims, many of them severly disabled, patiently waiting to touch the rock and drink from the water of this holy place. There is a profound respect here. Hundreds of volunteers make it all work. I must say, though I was appalled at the commercialism, I was touched by the spirit of this place. My prayers were said and I avoided the push to buy plastic 'Mary' water bottles and 100E candles but I was tempted by the Lourdes corkscrew. Why do we do such things as humans? It is a place where I suspect Jesus would turn over the tables and storm out in a rage as in days of old.
We had intended to spend the night near Lourdes but it was still sunny and the Pyrenees were beckoning us. After a great meal at an Italian restaurant near the main Tourist Info booth, we set PG for Andorra da Ville. The only word that came to mind, again, was Sugoi (the Japanese word for fantastic). Where yesterday we had no view of the mountains today they were all around us. The highway PG chose took us in to Spain through an amazing mountain pass (right in the middle of a ski hill) and south of Andorra before turning back up to the country. Now PG does things in strange ways but for this I will be eternally grateful. It was beautiful with the sun shining on the snowy peaks, the stone villages in the valley, the ruins of old outposts. Really sugoi!! With all the photo stops and windy road we still managed to get to our hotel by 18:30. They gave me the internet rate I wanted and all is good. We have booked for two nights. This is off season so, for 50E a night we get a four star hotel with pool, sauna & gym right in the middle of town. Great! Today we walked from one end of the town to the other on a very nice stone path elevated above the city with a few farms between us and the chaos. Wandered around the city a bit and are now enjoying a kick back. Plan to go for a swim this afternoon, rest a bit and go on the town later for dinner.
Now.... 37 years ago Shane, Jerry and I thought we were in this village. We all have memories of being in Andorra da Ville but.... it weren't anything like what we see outside. Totally confused we spoke with a local today and discovered that all those years ago we were really only in a ski village near the border. We never did come this far in.
Tomorrow we take that highway out of the country to France. Hopefully our fuzzy memories will be become clearer.