Oh my Lourde(s) Why did we come here?!

We decided against our best instincts to go to Lourdes to see the sanctuary. We arrived in a city that was chaotically busy, people and traffic everywhere. Trying to find our way through the madness to find somewhere to park was a nightmare but after going through the busy high street full of people on foot in the middle of the road who seemed oblivious of the fact that a van was right behind them we eventually found a place behind a shabby hotel where we could leave Ivy. It seemed safer than the pay to park areas ( which were extortionately priced anyway) so we locked her up, put her alarms on and walked towards the sanctuary. As we neared the river way there was the overpowering noise of hundreds of motorcycles revving their engines and beeping their horns as they rode through the town. On and on it went as they kept coming, the noise and the smell of burning fuel and rubber in the air. There must have been some kind of motorcycle event going on. Bliss didn’t seem to be bothered by it ( we were though) so we carried on through the town towards the sanctuary. There were lots of nuns and monks walking around the town, and the shops were full of Virgin Mary ornaments Christ on the cross and bottles for holy water and all kinds of other souvenirs. Honestly… “What a load of old tat!”
We pushed on through the crowds to get to the sanctuary and finally arrived at some large open gates into a garden area. As we tried to walk through the gates we were called back by a security man who said we could not take a dog in so that was that! Enough was enough.
We walked back to Ivy as fast as we could and got the hell out of there! How could somewhere that was supposed to be heavenly be so much like hell?!!
The lack of photos on this post is the result of us really not enjoying the experience.
We know we don’t like cities and busy peopley places so we should have known better. Lesson learnt...again!… yet again.🙄
We drove the rest of the afternoon through some pretty epic mountain roads to get to a basic car park behind a hotel that would be home for tonight. We need to get up nice and early in the morning for the adventure we had planned for tomorrow. To make sure the experience was a nice quiet one without hordes of people a dawn start is the plan.Читать далее