France, we are happy to be back!

To finish off the holiest places in Europe, we went to see Lourdes. After Fatima and Santiago de Compostella, Lourdes is the last on missing of the holy trinity.

This city came to a certain fame when the 13-year-old Bernadette Soubirous had an apparition of "a pretty woman" in 1858. Within the next five month, there were 17 more apparitions. In one of them, the lady told Bernadettte that there should be a chapel built for her on a specific site. 

Nowadays there are three basilicas, on church and three chapels. And of course the grotto where the apparitions happened. Furthermore there is a cloister on the Espelugues hill right next to the holy site. It features the 14 stations of Jesus' walk with the cross, depicted by 115 life size statues made of bronze.

The "Scala Santa" leads up to the 3rd (I think) station. There is a sign at the bottom of the steps, asking you to only "go" up the 22 stairs on your knees. Well, my human said thank you, but no thank you to that one.

Check out the sign, it says it in 8 languages

Besides this place of pilgrimage, there is not all that much to Lourdes, to be quite honest. There is a 7th Century fortress on a small hill which also houses the city museum. She was going to check it out but got there 5 minutes before it closed, so that was that.

And that's pretty much it, really. You can buy plastic bottles in the shape of Mother Mary in many different sizes and other water canisters up to 5 liters to fill at the spring, which Bernadette discovered and which has been linked to many miracle cures. All prized rather horrendously, of course. The canisters, not the miracles.

So after a rain free but overcast morning and a quick lunch, we drove on for a couple of hours to Toulouse. We parked on a large area dedicated to busses. There was not a single bus, but many campervans. It's a bit out of town, right next to the space center.

Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. It also hosts the European headquarters of Intel.

By the time we got there it had started drizzling again, but my human went for a run nevertheless. After a quick shower and a call to her parents, we settled in with a bowl of soup and a rather terrible movie.

In the morning her and Carmelo used the public transport to get into town. Right at the metro stop, they found the tourist office where they got a map and some directions. Since food is always on her mind, their first stop was the Victor Hugo Marché, a large covered market, where you can get everything from flowers to fish and truffles.

Of course, there are a few churches to look at, but also a nice garden with a pretty fountain. They walked past a museum which had a temporary exhibition called "Love" going. And since she has some blind spots in that department, they wanted to check it out. Thing was, she didn't have a proof of vaccination on her and Carmelo still isn't fully vaccinated. So they couldn't get in. Shame, really.

They even had to take away there food for lunch, because they were not allowed to sit in the restaurant, not even outside. It was the same over summer, when we were in France for the first time, but we thought things had relaxed a little bit by now. But after having a look at the numbers, it's no surprise, really, that they haven't.

So instead of the museum, they walked along the river Garonne for a while, first on one bank, than the other. And since it wasn't raining, that was just as nice. Still not great, the weather, but a lot better. 

In the afternoon we spontaneously decided to drive on a little towards Carcassonne, a small city with an impressive fortress and town walls. A friend of my human had told us about this place and since it was pretty much on the way to Montpellier anyway...

With a stop on the way to do laundry, we arrived just before sunset at our spot for the night, a small, privately run parking area for campervans with everything one needs along the way, power, WIFI, fresh water and discharge.

It does get a bitty nippy now during the night. Under the covers it's fine, but having to go to the "bathroom", a large word, or getting up in the morning, isn't much fun. I do have heating of course, but my human can't really figure it out. She can turn it on and it will run for about 30 minutes, but then it turns itself off again. There should be a program which keeps the temperature you set, but... User failure, clearly.

Anyway, with power she plugged in her little heating device and all was cozy for the night.

After breakfast and household chores, we drove on to Carcassonne. What people come here for is La Cité Médiéval. Built about 2500 years ago, this fortified village is still inhabited and once you walk through the gate, you feel like in a medieval movie about kings and knights and fair ladies.

The ramparts are 3km long and there are 52 towers along it. You can walk around on a large portion of it and get amazing views towards the actual town across the river and on a clear day, you can see the Pyrenees. Which by now have snow on them down to about 1500 meters. It was a clearish day, but very, very windy, especially up on the walls.

For lunch, my human tried a typical dish for this region, Casserole. It differs wildly from one town and even one restaurant to the next, but basicall it's a stew of white beans with sausage, duck, pork, any other kind of meat, and not much else. Typically, it is served with bread and a strong red wine. Since my human is a responsible one, and because she doesn't like red, she just had water to go with it.
Which turned out to be a very good thing, because we got pulled out at an intersection not 30 minutes later to blow into a little plastic tube and show our papers. 0,0% 

For the next couple of nights we would park up next to a vineyard a few kilometers outside of Montpellier. From there it is easy to get into the city with public transport. The South of France is not exactly know for being the safest area for campervans, a lot of breaking in and smashing windows. So we feel safer to stay away from the cities a bit. And it is usually a lot quieter as well. 

After we arrived here in the afternoon, my human took a long walk through the rows and rows of grapevine surrounding us. The Languedoc, which is the name of the wine region surrounding Montpellier, is the larges in France, with around 300.000 hectare. This is around three times larger than all the wine growing areas in Germany combined.
Considering that it gets about 300 days of sunshine per year, it is obviously very productive.

After a nice chat with one of our neighbors in the morning, who had his window smashed in in the middle of the night while he was in there sleeping, Carmelo and my human took the tram into town. After 30 minutes the found themselves at the Place de la Comèdie, one of the largest public squares in France, and where everything comes together.

From here you go in one direction and you will find the old city, small alleys, cute little squares with restaurants and cafes, churches, of course, and a couple of old city gates. The only ones still standing. You can also find the oldest still operating medical institute in the world.

Look through this Arc de Triomph and you can see...

...this statue of Louis XIV...

...this water tower...

...and behind it is the Acueducto de Saint Clèment

In the other direction, you pass a large shopping mall and then get to the newest part of town. A score of modern buildings form a kind of corridor which you walk through for some 15 minutes until you get to fancy hotel on a small river with a fountain in the middle. On the other side of the water stands one of the most futuristic and modern buildings the city has to offer, the L'Arbre Blanc by Sou Fujimoto. 

The contrast between old and new is quite striking in Montpellier. Both has it's charm, but my human liked it better in the old town. Which has nothing to do with the nice meal and good wine she enjoyed there. I think. Why she liked the city in general, though, has in large parts to do with the weather. Blue sky, bright sunshine, 18 degrees. After some 10 days of rain, drizzle, wind and grey skies, today was such a relief! The sun is still there!