Lourdes

The Pope!!

People waiting for the pope to arrive.

"La grotte" where the virgin mary appeared.

The little bottle of holy water that I got from Lourdes.

The city of Lourdes

On saturday morning we went to the train station and took the SNCF train from Pau to Lourdes. It was only a 15 min. train ride, much closer than we had expected. Lourdes is one of the most holy cities in the world, and is where the virgin mary appeared. The pope was in Lourdes this weekend, which is the main reason that me and 7 other USAC students decided to go. We arrived around 11 in the morning, before the pope arrived. It wasn't quite as crowded then so we got a chance to explore the town, visit the chapels, and go to the top of "le chateau fort" which was the ancient military fortress that was used to protect the town.

I really wanted to get holy water from there, which has been said to heal people. I got a couple small bottle full to bring back to my family. There were lots of people filling up gallon size bottles with holy water! I was perplexed as to why someone would need that much holy water! :)

The pope arrived from Paris by plane at 6:30 pm. We stood by where the pope mobile was supposed to be going through for several hours just to make sure that we would see him and get a good picture. It became so crowded a couple of hours before the pope got there! I couldn't believe how many people were there and how many different countries that they came from. There were tons of people from the Spain, Ireland, and all over France. This was a really historic event, definitely a once in a lifetime experience for me, and it was definitely worth the wait to be less than 10 ft away from the pope as he arrived!