Lourdes

One of the spots we visited on our trip to Europe was Lourdes, France. I had no idea what to expect of this place (especially with the weather!) or what was so popular about this spot. Apparently many years ago, there was a 14-year old girl named Bernadette Soubirous who saw apparations of what appeared to be the Virgin Mary. She had a total of 18 apparations and since then, thousands of people have come to visit the spot where she had the apparations which was in the Grotto of Masabielle (some stone cave). In one of these apparations, the Virgin Mary had asked her to make a chapel where people can worship, and after that a chapel was built on top of the Grotto. The church is actually pretty massive. There are like three chapels built on top of each other. It's like a church on top of a church on top of ANOTHER church! It's pretty crazy. Also, another thing that Mary had asked was to drink the water by the Grotto, and the water that was initially muddy miraculously became clear and had the power to heal.... Very hard to believe, but there's a whole movie about her and stuff on the internet about it. Totally something I never knew about until our trip to Lourdes. I want to watch the movie now!

Anyway, I guess every night, they have a torchlight procession where people from all over the world gather together to say the rosary... There were THOUSANDS of people in the procession reciting the rosary in so many languages, it was AMAZING. Truly an experience I'll never forget. It just felt really cool and heartwarming to be in the presence of so many people who had the same faith. The next day, there were masses galore... one every hour in each of the churches, and also by the Grotto.... There was also a LONG line to get immersed in the water to get "healed"... We had some people in our tour wait to dip themselves in the water, and they waited for THREE hours!!! Cah-RAZY!!!! There were so many people in wheelchairs waiting to get "healed" ... like hundreds. It was insane.... There were also faucets where you can also get the water from the stream as well... Along the street, you could buy bottles, jugs, liters to fill up holy water... We bought some little bottles to fill it up with the holy water for souvineers and we even filled up our drinking bottle also!

Anyway, we only had a one night stay in Lourdes (all you really need), but it was definitely one of the most memorable moments of our two week trip.

Here's a pic from the procession: