Mary Jane and Anna in Europe

Quick note: I started writing this blog a few days ago, so it's sort of in two installments, indicated by date.

Oct. 20: I write from an old half-timbered building built in 14-something and long since converted into a hotel. It's location is Amboise in the Loire Valley- the valley full of chateaux and rolling gold vinyards (and therefore sparkling white wine which even a red fan like me enjoys). Amboise has its own chateau made famous by Henry VII, who smacked his head on a low-lying lintel on his way to a tennis match and died. I think the locals find that funny.

We arrived here yesterday after traveling from Colmar, which was our first stop after Paris. Colmar is a quaint Alsatian village, from which we daytripped to an even quainter village - Riquewihr. About as picturesque as a town could be, with tall half-timbered buildings in bright candy colors of pink, yellow, blue, and green. If you broke a piece off a window shutter and bit it, it would be pure sugar. The Brothers Grimm must have been inspired by villages such as these; this one is only 15 kilometers from the German border. Perfect Christmas village - all it needed was snow and the crystal clear voices of a children's choir singing carols. We found a free wine tasting cave, but I wasn't actually big on any of them. I started getting scared and thinking, Do I not like good wine? but then we got to Loire and everything is fine again. The reds and whites are to be savored here.

From Colmar, we also went to neighboring Strasbourg and met up with my cousin Pat who is spending a semester there. He showed us the stunning chateau he's staying in and brought us to dinner with his group, at a little restaurant on the expansive wooded grounds. The hot food was a nice switch from the cafe sandwiches of Paris. Pat walked us back to the train station where we caught a train back to Colmar. We said something when we got there about how great it is to get into a small town where you know your way to a place after the first time getting there. Then we got lost for half an hour in an attempt to make it back to our place. I don't believe the concept of the straight line was big with medieval road-pavers.

Our hotel owner Agnes - a tiny woman with big brown eyes and a huge smile - told us last night that Clos de Luce, the home where Leonardo Da Vinci spent the last three years of his life, was to be free admission today-the one day of the year that they waive the 12 euro fee. Worth the visit - elegant well-preserved home and grounds full of full-scale models taken from Da Vinci's drawings. The best thing about it was the roaring fire in the old kitchen.

Bought some great wine today and drank it on a bench overlooking the Loire river. I thought it was a twist off cap but it turned out to be corked, so we set it on the edge of our bench in case any nice locals passing by felt like offering us a corkscrew. Sure enough, a Frenchman in a red sweatshirt and hat stopped with his group and threw an enthusiastic bunch of French at the lovely little wine bottle. I don't know if there was something special about this particular wine or what. They didn't have a corkscrew, but a few minutes after they left, they pulled up in their car and he jumped out of it brandishing a corkscrew; he uncorked the bottle for us and took a big swig with great relish before handing it back with a grin. I guess it wouldn't have been fair not to let have some.

Amboise is a slow little town with nothing much going on but a few shop-lined streets, a cheateau once inhabited by French royalty, a beautiful church called St. Denis which was at one time a stop on the Santiago De Compastella pilgrimage, and the Loire river. It's nice, though, to get into some places where we don't have a ton to do. I feel a little silly because we didn't even get to Chenonceau, the nearby chateau, but we took a long walk along the river and saw some of the countryside. A good rest-up before the craze of night-training it to Lourdes.

Oct. 23: So, two words on night-training it: never again. Actually, before long we will be doing so to get from Rome to Prague, but hopefully our recovery will be complete by then. I'll leave the details out but suffice it to say that Mary was kind enough to make this a feel like a real pilgrimage for us, complete with train delays at 1 am, seat reservations that others took comfortably for themselves so that we had to scrunch into the seats by the doors and jump up whenever anyone wanted to get off, unexpected transfers at 4 am (when everyone got off at Bordeaux and we finally had real seats, we thought it was smooth sailing. Should have been tipped off when we were the ONLY people left on the train and everyone else was standing right outside it peering back in at us with weird looks on their faces). Then the conductors came through and told us to get off. As a consolation prize, they gave us croissants while we waited in the blistering cold for our last connection to Lourdes. (Side note: Lourdes is Loo-AAA-duh in France. If anyone already knows that, thanks for not spoiling the fun for us. Then we somehow arrived in Lourdes half an hour earlier than we were supposed to: cartoon moment where our eyes popped open and we looked at each other for a split second before flying out of our seats. The last thing we wanted to do was miss getting off. I threw my shoes back on while MJ tore out of her seat to get the luggage down from overhead. I kid you not, I've never seen such quick action in my life: I took about six seconds to jam my shoes on and when I looked up, she had both our luggages - which are quite a trick to get up and down even for two people - ready to roll. We usually hoist mine up, which is the heavier one (I've got to stop buying you all such heavy gifts) with one of us on either side, and get it high enough to slide onto the overhang, but that's where it gets tricky. I guess that's where we reach our max and we just can't actually move it any more, so we usually hover in midair and try not to giggle at our silly stance until a guy feels sorry for us and helps us out. Anyway, we made it out and so there we were in the dark (it was still dark at 7:30, isn't that weird?) and - here's where Mary really got nice - there was no baggage check at the station so we lugged everything along with us to the grotto.
Lourdes is largely ruined by garish tourism. We trudged along in the gray dawn amidst neon hotel signs and shops brimming with cheap religious trinkets. The grotto itself it still a peaceful haven from the rest of the town. We caught the end of mass, walked through the basilica, and filled our water battles at the spring's fountains. We tried to see Bernadette's birthplace, but everyone closes for lunch at noon so we missed that, as we had to get back to the station and make sure we could get a train to Carcassone, which is where we are now. So glad we went to Lourdes even if was a hassle and not that aesthetically pleasing. You have the knowledge that you're in a holy place and that it means something to go out of your way to get there.
Carcassone is the oldest medieval city there is, close to the Spanish border, and we're staying within the castle walls - cold showers but so good just to take one - but more on that later as I'm running out of time.