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Hi Again to all,
As I write, I'm sitting on the top floor of a hotel in Hyeres with a fantastic 360 degree view of the surroundings.We're just outside of Toulon, which is at the beginning of the Southern strip, which we'll be attacking next, with the plan to spend our wedding anniversary in St. Tropez - time to splash out!
So - what have we been up to?Well, loads.
The centre of Toulouse gave us the opportunity to do a bit of shopping, something that we've also just done in Marseille.It felt good after nearly a month of not buying anything apart from essentials, petrol and the like, to actually just getting stuff purely for ourselves.Good old Retail therapy!
The highlight of the last week for me though was probably Lourdes.We made our way towards the Pyrenees which were inspiring enough, but on entering Lourdes it was like being in a different country.Without realising it we were quite accustomed to the French style by now and so any deviation from this was instantly recognisable.In places, it actually looked like China town, because of lots of bunting (it was an anniversary year of their main Holy place - 'Sanctuaires') and lots of neon, even at 10:30 in the morning.There were also lots of Chinese people too, but hey, we were on the tourist trail as well.......The tourist thing was mostly evident in the aptly named 'Rue De Grotte' which housed some of the tackiest souvenirs I have ever seen.Seriously, they can't have been selling too many of the 5 litre water bottles with a picture of Jesus on?
Besides the water bottles, It's clearly a very holy place and quite over-whelming even when you don't know quite what's going on.I kept feeling that I had to remove my cap on several occasions, even if I wasn't sure if I was being offensive.It also felt a bit weird because there was obviously something going on (the Anniversary) and people were deeply involved in private prayer.We left the Sanctuaires and went up their 'Walk of Christ' which went up high into the mountains - a real leg workout - but it was fantastically adorned with gold tableaus of Christ's journey to the cross, and subsequent resurrection.Check out the photos on this site to get an idea of how good these bigger than life scenes were.
Next we found ourselves at the beachy areas of Narbonne and Montpellier.We're saving ourselves for the true south before working on our Tans properly, so soaked up the atmosphere from here in the main.We also did a bit more camping in this area.We were going to stay for longer but only stayed the one night in the end, due to being put off by the owner of the site who interrupted a perfectly good game of Boules (not ours) and began shouting at the team.Not just a small burst, he actually followed them around the camp-site having a good old go.They must have seriously deviated from the rules, or maybe there's an offside I didn't know about?
All of which brings us back to now, ready for the next chapters......
Speak to you all again soon
Love Darren and Jo.
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