Mega-Vacation Day 7 - Nice to Lourdes, France

Day 7 (Nice to Lourdes):
Well, I felt much better today – my sty has all but disappeared, my sunburn is turning to a nice sun tan, and I didn’t add to my considerably total of mosquito bites. We began travelling very early in the morning – a 4:30 wake-up call for 5:50 train from Nice to Marseille, the second largest city in France. We arrived on schedule and got some coffee/orange juice in the city near the train station, which is located on a hill with a lovely view of the city. Marseille is interesting – the French accent is nearly incomprehensible, totally different from Parisian style with considerable Arabic influence (Marseille has the largest number of Arab immigrants). Overall, good impressions of the town, and perhaps I will return another time.
Marseille to Toulouse was a bit more difficult. When we found our train, we found that we had reservations on a car that didn’t exist. Fortunately, we were not the only ones, and after an hour of asking the SNCF guys about the problem, they added 7 new cars to the train (kinda cool). We got on and got moving an hour late, but fortunately we had a significant layover in Toulouse which simply got cut down from 2 hours to only 1. It was a bit of bummer because I would have liked to explore a bit of this nice city.
Well, we didn’t leave Toulouse totally unscathed – we had an unfortunate run-in with three moronic, scantily-clad local hobos who decided to give us a hard time. Coming back from lunch, one guy asked me for money and he immediately recognized that I was not French. I lied when we asked me if I spoke English and walked past and into a nearby supermarket. Stupidly, I left Hansky alone, and one of the guys weirdly broke off the luggage tag off of my bag that Hansky was using for the trip, only to have it returned to me in the market 5 minutes by the moron-leader himself. Close call, but the score is as follows: intelligent, sarcastic travelers: 1; idiotic, uneducated, toothless locals: 0.
The trip from Toulouse to Lourdes went rather smoothly, and we arrived at our hotel after a lengthy walk up and down hilly streets around 7:30.
Lourdes is a quaint little town tucked into the foothills of the Pyrenees famous for being a Catholic pilgrimage site. Story has it that in the 1850s, the Virgin Mary appeared many times in a grotto in Lourdes to a young girl (Saint Bernadette) and told her to build a church on that spot. Well, at least I believe that’s right. In addition, the grotto is now famous because its water supposedly holds healing powers for ailments – so people come bearing gallons upon gallons of empty cartons and fill them up (if nothing else, the water here was amazingly fresh and tasty, as it came straight out of a spring). Anyway, Lourdes is ridiculously packed with Catholic tourists from all over the world, making it the 2nd most visited city in all of France (behind Paris).
As a Catholic, I found the story interesting – but to be honest, I was much more interested in the mountainous scenery. While MT and Hansky marveled at the pilgrimage sites, I gazed up at the mountains. :)
Our hotel was incredibly quaint, with an all-wooden staircase and small cottage-like room, a nice contrast to the tourist shops set up everywhere selling little water bottles and Catholic-related trinkets. We walked down to the grotto and the nice church on the side of a mountain before dinner – I explored a bit on my own as Hansky and MT prayed at the grotto. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and thus I was unable to see the true, snow-capped Pyrenees. :)
We ate Italian food for dinner and returned to the grotto for a mass in French – it was an interesting experience to see all the people praying in their respective languages (behind French, Italian was by far the most popular). Visiting the holy sites was just that…interesting. Mind-blowing and awe-inspiring? Well, maybe not for me…but that is another story.