Lourdes.
I haven’t been here for quite some time, but the journey here today from Barcelona gave me plenty of flashbacks.
Wakeup and out past mildly disgruntled desk staff to claim Bergman before the authorities get him. I then sat in him a short while until Tristan came. “I don’t think you’ll be welcome back at that hotel,” he observes, as he describes his checkout experience. Yep, I’m pretty sure of that. Linkback FUN. Mostly I’m extremely balanced and kind, but the scale got tipped just by city people after country peace. I can more or less keep my logic and my cool while I’m angry, and I did. It was all just so unnecessary and expensive and I had the misfortune to be speaking to the wrong human.
We stopped at a coffee shop and had an omelette and of course that was when I got my parking ticket. No idea how to pay it, and no instructions on the ticket, like I should know. I tried through a machine. Didn’t work. Big cities!!! Lou is right to just want to get out of them ASAP. This is why last time we went straight to Girona. It’s not a metropolis. Barcelona can go suck a pig.
Bergie Tristan and I struck out up through the Pyrenees, avoiding toll roads, following our nose. We took the route that looked pretty. Lakes and mountains.
At lunchtime we tried a place that is an albergue for pilgrims on Camino. We are in that familiar territory now. The owner’s son was having a kidney transplant, and an extraordinary sunpickled woman (“She could have been Andean!”) directed us to Entremont restaurant in Liguerre, just five minutes away. There we had one of the best priced and thought out set menus I’ve ever had in Spain, bearing in mind all the weeks of Camino. An incredible lunch. One to remember. In a beautiful place.
And I guess that this is the purpose of the return trip. We are taking it slow, and we are seeking beauty and nurture as we go. It’s no coincidence we are in Lourdes now, where so much started for me, and for my mother before me. Now I’ve carried that holy water to Santiago and committed it to the ocean and to God, now that Compostela is written and dedicated to her memory, now I can come back to this holy holy place and I can maybe find out about what the energies can shift in my life and the life of those I love in the NOW. Last Camino was about the past. I might get a passport tomorrow, stamp it, get dunked by the funky monks and then finish another Compostela in decades on the same passport. Intention is all. Once you’re on the journey you’re on the journey. I could fly there at 100 and finish.
Bedtime now for me. We found pizza. Now we are two men lying farting next to one another. We have to check out early. Perfect opportunity to go get smacked about by God on a Tuesday.
AlBarclay 