travel log part II: Lourdes

We took a bus through Southern France to get to Lourdes. Lourdes, as one of the kids put it, is Catholic Las Vegas...the narrow streets of this little town are lined with shops and neon signs offering glow in the dark Virgin Mary statuettes, Virgin Mary shot glasses, eight foot tall crucifixes, and so forth.

Lourdes is a small, safe town so we mostly wandered around doing our own thing (there's the grotto, the baths, the basilica, the tacky shops, and, yeah, that's about it). I was praying at the grotto at night, and a creepy French guy tried to pick me up (while there was a Mass going on directly ahead of me, mind you). Or perhaps I misunderstood his intentions, and he really did just want to go on a rosary walk...

Actually, I was pretty popular with the French guys, much to my dismay. I guess the baggy, bright pink polartec jacket which I wore constantly really did it for them.