That evening, we checked in at a nice, modern hotel, just ten minutes away from the cathedral, but with a completely different atmosphere. It sits across a park and a small lake.
The view from my room was beautiful and relaxing, but quite generic and devoid of any of the character that defines the city of Santiago. The walls were immaculately white with a chocolate brown and apple green motiff on the room’s minimalistic furniture and décor. This unexpected “Zen” vibe was actually a welcome change. I rested, showered, freshened up, and then headed to the equally chic and sophisticated lobby bar in the basement, where I had agreed to meet my travel amigas earlier to have a round of drinks.
This was our first night in Spain, so we decided to celebrate with glasses of sangria. Other tour mates (mostly the Australian delegation; Ms. Lady Ringleader’s troop were nowhere to be found that night) soon joined us and we enjoyed socializing with them in a bar set-up, as opposed to a church, for a change. Our conversations revolved around the lighter side of life – family, kids at school, hobbies, and food. There were four blaring wide-screen television sets around the bar area. One of them had the local newscast on air. A segment on the heavy floods in southwestern France caught everyone’s attention and we all stopped talking to start watching.
We were scheduled to be in that area in two days with Lourdes being a major itinerary in this pilgrimage. The news report mentioned that heavy rains around the region inundated town centres and swelled the Gave de Pau River, forcing road closures. Moreover, they announced the closure of the shrine in Lourdes and the spokesperson for the pilgrimage complex said that the site was not likely to reopen until the end of the week. Masses were cancelled, entrances to the sanctuaries were cordoned off, and even the live feed video broadcast around the world went down.
Clearly, we all got very worried. We were all looking forward to visit Lourdes. In fact, a number of our tour mates went on this pilgrimage because of Lourdes. Some said they had heard about this from friends texting them the day before, but didn’t expect it to be this bad. As we were on the road for most of the time, we were not updated on what’s been going on around the world. We wondered why our Tour Director had not mentioned anything about it. He would have known for sure, as he would have been contacted by the tour company. If the roads to southwestern France were closed, were we even going to attempt crossing the border?
A very optimistic fellow said that our Tour Director probably just didn’t want to cause unnecessary panic and had opted to keep it cool and wait for further developments. After all, we still had two days and anything could happen in two days. Knowing him, this was most likely the case.
We decided to adopt the same positive attitude and, on that note, ordered another round of drinks before we retired for the night.
Photo Credit:
nh-hotels.com
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