I have been very lax in keeping up the blog. I will try to do better.

We are back in France on the barge, after being in Switzerland for 3 weeks. Loved every minute.. cold but very little snow.

Today, we are visiting Lourdes which is about 130 kms away from Castelsarrasin, our winter port. We have been reading about Lourdes... besides being a 'Disneyland' for the religious (do you want a paperweight with snow falling on the Blessed Virgin Mary?), it is the second most visited city in France (after Paris)!! But winter is their low season. I guess not too many people on crutches and in wheelchairs move around outside in the winter.

There are over 150 people each year saying they have been 'healed' after visiting the Grotto and touching the water (Bernadette had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary several hundred years ago, and a spring welled up on the spot, now a 'grotto'). The Vatican over the centuries has recognised 61 of these cures as 'miracles'. So... it should be interesting.

Tomorrow night, we are going out to dinner at a restaurant just started by a young French women who, last year, won the TV show title of 'Masterchef' of France. The prize of €100,000 allowed her to open up a small restaurant at her farm. The restaurant is only about a 30 minute drive from the barge. But this woman, would you believe, lives on the farm with her husband and their 6 children between the ages of 18 months and 8 years, and raises her own cows, chickens, and garden vegetables for the restaurant!!! And we thought we were busy!