It took some doing to find the village, Villargein, which was hidden away high in the foothills of the Pyrenees. We had to stop once to ask directions but finally made it ...
Our friend Geneviève welcomed us and took us for a walk up the hill behind their gite, with sheep and lambs trotting around in the pastures beside us and the high Pyrenees just beyond. Here you can see Geneviève and Steve being good sports about yet another photo ...
The gite itself dated from the 1700s and was like a cottage in a fairy tale -- low ceilings, twisting beams, plaster walls, wide-plank floors, and spiraling stairs mounting up through three tiny stories, each with its shuttered window opening out on a view like something from Heidi. Geneviève was sharing it that week with her teenage son and her sister from Marseille. Below you see her getting ready to put lunch on the table; it consisted of four separate courses: green salad, poached chicken and a celery root/potato dish, cheese, and croustade. Oh, and wine of course, as well as olives, nuts, and crackers beforehand!
At 3 pm we finally got up from the table and took leave of our friends, who had another week of their mountain idyll ahead of them, and traveled 3 hours west and south, deeper into the Pyrenees. We stayed in a town, Luz-St.-Sauveur, that catered frenetically to skiers, of whom there were plenty (we learned that France is divided into three school-vacation regions, all of which were falling a week apart in February). We spent Sunday morning hiking four hours roundtrip over mostly snow and ice to the Cirque de Gavarnie, a glacial rock formation that is a favorite destination of cross-country skiers and snowshoers. This year, there has been such light snowfall that even people in running shoes (like me) can make it:
The Cirque itself:
On Sunday afternoon we found ourselves near world-famous Lourdes, so we stopped in out of curiosity. At first it seemed like a bad move (miles of religious junk shops), but we were lucky enough to find a cool little museum, open only on school holidays, dedicated to the life of St. Bernadette, to whom the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared 18 times over a period of about two weeks in the mid-1800s. Bernadette, grindingly poor, became an international celebrity for a few years, then disappeared into a local convent and died young. Lourdes was unstoppable, however, and became the largest, probably tackiest pilgrimage destination in the western hemisphere.
On Monday we visited Auch for its cathedral, famous for stunning stained glass windows, and also the elegant city of Pau, birthplace of one of France's greatest kings, Henri IV. We had a guided tour of its famous chateau and met a lovely elderly French tourist who asked us, in slow but perfect English, if we'd been able to understand everything the tour guide said. It turns out she used to teach English in Bretagne and was clearly delighted (if a little nervous) at getting the chance to practice it again with us.
The Pau chateau, as afternoon shadows lengthen:
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