July 13

We met some other LAF friends Rodney White and his wife Pam. We saw Davis Phinney as we were walking to the Grotte, so his son Taylor and his friend Breckenridge came with us. The area around the church was flooded with people. The Grotte is towards the back side of the church so we made our way around there first. I was ready to dip my plastic Virgin Mary in the holy water when we discovered that the spring is covered by plexiglass. The water is then piped up a long line of faucets, like you see in an airport bathroom, where you push it and it runs for a few seconds, then shuts off. It seemed weird getting holy water out of a faucet, but I was putting it in a plastic Virgin Mary after all! We viewed the Grotte but didn't wait in the long line to see the water under the plexiglass or touch the rock wall that everyone was fascinated with. There was a special gate for wheelchairs and Breckenridge said they had a long procession of wheelchairs twice a day. It was kinda sad to see all of the sick people there hoping for a miracle to touch them.

We were in a group talking and a priest approached us in full frock and asked us if we were Americans. He said he was from Illinois and was there doing research on a man and the possibility of him becoming a saint. I'm not Catholic, but I think that's what he said. We told him we were just visiting since it was a rest day for the Tour de France. He lifted his sleeve and revealed a LiveSTRONG wristband! "I've caught a couple of stages!", he said. He was a Lance fan and had been wearing the wristband because someone in his office was diagnosed. We all thought that was great to see the bright wristband on the serious priest garb.

Next we headed to the church to look around. There were huge mosaics on every wall that were stunningly beautiful. There were people praying so we made our way around the church quietly and took some pictures. There were some museums and other things on the grounds but nothing was in English so we wouldn't be able to read anything.

We did what we do best, found a cute cafe and had a beer! We had all been doing different things the past few days so we caught, shared stories and upcoming plans. Rodney and Pam were going to meet us in Paris and we talked to Chris about the start in Pau. We all split up and went separate directions. We went back to our hotel to get a jacket because it was getting cold.

We ran into Ilene and John on our way back to our hotel. They told us about their rest day riding up the Tourmalet. It had been warm and sunny on the way up the climb, then freezing at the top and on the descent. Ilene mentioned that they had changed hotels because their first one was not so great. That got us thinking on the way back to ours, so we started stopping in hotels we past by to see if they had a room. Our current hotel had tiny twin beds, no telephone for Jerry to get on the internet with and no television to watch the Eurosport Tour de France replay at night. We found a room at the Hotel Arcade, just up the street from our current hotel. We packed from our hotel and moved to the new one, tossed bags in the room and left to find some dinner. We had a bad but quick dinner of omelets and frites - they serve frites or chocolate with everything. When we got back to the hotel, Jerry tried to get on the internet. When we checked in we asked if the room had a telephone. They said yes. What they didn't tell us was that the telephones in the hotel were not working, except to call the front desk. Jerry went down to the front desk and chewed them out for lying to us. I just went on to bed because we were going to get up early to ride up a mountain in the morning.