Tales of Lourdes...continued
I've been a bit remiss of late. I haven't got round to writing any more blogs but after a bit of gentle encouragement from some friends and relatives I've got the bit between my teeth again. It's also a welcome distraction from writing Christmas cards.
I've also recently changed my phone and I've lost all my notes that I made on it. So I'm having to go from memory and my tweets from the time.
To Basque or not to Basque
Nuala and I went on a coach trip to Basque country on the Sunday. Well, it was mainly a trip to get cheap booze and cigarettes for those who were so inclined (not me, you understand).
The journey took a couple of hours and took us past various towns one being Bayonne, where the bayonet comes from allegedly, corn fields and villages up to a place called Ibardin on the mountainside, literally just on the border between Spain and France. It was really quite bizarre as there wasn't anything else around apart from trees and sky as far as the eye could see. It was simply a small steep street consisting solely of bespoke duty free shops and cafés nestled on the side of a mountain.
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| View from the duty free shops (the view the other way was not so good) |
As soon as we got off the coach, Nuala and I got our priorities right and sat on some steps in the warm sun to eat our packed lunch. This consisted of a beautifully fresh crusty baguette with juicy ham. Ooh, this was the life.
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| what a lovely baguette |
Nuala and I pottered around and I bought my husband a wooden catapult (as you do) and a lovely leather belt. I also learned the Basque phrase for thank you, but gave up trying to pronounce it after the 10th time of making a complete tit of myself.
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| Trusty catapult |
After about an hour and a half, we set off again, this time for a place on the south western french coast called Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
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| St-Jean-de-Luz's gorgeous beach |
This is a lovely wee fishing town. For those of you who are interested in history, it was where King Louis XIV married Marie-Therese of Spain in 1660.
Nuala and I sat in the square and drank coffee as we people watched. It was pretty sublime. That café was also the place where our waiter taught me the french word for a shandy - 'un panaché'. Up until that point, I had been asking for 'half a lemonade and half a beer in the same glass' in stilted french. When I did it in the café in Saint-Jean-de Luz the waiter looked at me as though I was speaking Japanese. Oh, how that singular word made life so much simpler from that point on.
After our fill of coffee and panachés, I found a divine ice cream shop. As soon as I tried out my rusty french, the assistant automatically lapsed into english and served me the most delicious selection of as many ice cream flavours that he could fit on a single cone.
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| that'll do nicely |
Opposite our hotel was the Monastery of the Poor Clare Sisters, an enclosed religious order. One of our group had told me that the nuns always sang in the evening and it was a beautiful thing to behold.
I wandered across after dinner and sat in the chapel, with three other people. I could just about see a couple of the nuns' faces behind the bars.
The singing was absolutely beautiful. They had such pure, haunting voices and along with the accompanying harpsichord (I think that's what it was) the sound filled the chapel. It was mesmerising.
Could it get any more french?
That evening after dinner, we went to our local café and sat outside in the warm night air drinking panachés and coffee. We watched nuns, priests, pilgrims, monks, workers and tourists bustling past. The air was filled with laughter, chatter, smells of lavender and tons and tons of pretty moths. The colourful lights from the variety of shops and cafés gave the whole atmosphere a lovely suffused glow.
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| moths and more moths on the side of the café wall |
We talked about religion and a whole range of other topics. Alain, the café owner, looked after us wonderfully. Then a woman with an accordion arrived and started to play for us. This prompted Nuala to get up and dance in the street with Jim, another member of our group. I felt at that moment that it was all so perfectly french and all so perfectly 'perfect'. The whole experience was warming my heart and banishing the trauma of my cancer experience to the back of my mind.
I was starting to feel such immense joy at being in a place so warm, friendly and uplifting with such fun loving people. My preconceived ideas were slowly melting away and I started to get a sense of inner peace.
What a place. And yet more fun and surprises were to come.
Next time
Being anointed, lighting candles and 'saucy' jokes.
