We took a zero in Lourdes, Betty hadn’t slept well the night before and we liked the hotel we found, so we decided a rest day was in order. We also needed to work out the details of our next section.
Why Lourdes? Well Cauterets is expensive, mostly ski chalets, apartments and luxury things. Lourdes is much cheaper, we were able to find a ton of options for 40 euros a night and even a couple for less, but one of those had a lumpy bed and we could hear the people in the next room and there was a super creepy hole bigger than a grapefruit above you in the shower.
Lourdes is famous for some lady who had several visions of the Virgin Mary, who directed her to a spring in town, which is supposed to have healing properties. As a result the town is bursting with old people, disabled people and religious fanatics. The shops are all filled with Virgin Mary statures and special bottles you can put your water from the Lourdes spring into. The first night of our trip the hotel we randomly selected felt like a retirement home, it was packed with seniors. Not that I have aborting against seniors, but mobs of them are a bit much. The town is a disaster to drive through, lots of people walking in the streets not paying attention and lots of crazy intersections and curvy roads. So why have we stated there four nights now? Well the price, close to the mountains, and the food is actually fantastic, we had Tibetan, shri Lankan and Vietnamese that were all fantastic.