Céret, Chez Michèle

This was my view for morning coffee and prayers.

We are seeing lots of hangliders coasting in the air from up above, higher up the mountain and sailing over the valley and the town of Ceret. We are all tempted to try hang gliding, but I don't actually have the nerve to do it!

Another picture of my view this morning on Michele's patio. Ceret is down below. Correction: We can't see Céret from this vantage point. It is other French towns in the area, such as Perpingnon. The Mediterranean Sea is at the horizon.

Bonjour! We are in Céret, in the south of France, in the Pyrenees, staying with a friend. This little house is on the mountainside, which requires some extremely tight hairpin turns and several switch backs to get to. On our way here, I accidentally went one exit too far on the highway and ended up in Spain for a few minutes!

I am jumping around a little bit to touch on some highlights of our first few days...

We arrived safe and sound after our three flights in Toulouse on Tuesday afternoon. I was relieved and so grateful to God that the rental car ended up being an automatic because that would have just been one more thing to get used to. When we were trying to get to our hotel for the first night, I had to go back and forth on the same little stretch of road about four times to finally figure out how to GET to the hotel parking lot. Sometimes the layout of things is just not as obvious as in the United States. I am feeling how "small" everything is... the lanes on the highways, the cars themselves, the driveways of parking lots, etc. Not to mention getting to the hotel and noticing things like "tiny" night stands, and "tiny" trashcans.  

We spend a LONG time figuring out how to get the luggage carrier on top of the car, and it ultimately could only hold about 3 suitcases, but it was just enough that we could cram the rest of our luggage in the back and everyone (except me, the driver) had to have their backpacks at their feet. 

These are our wheels for the next two months! 

We got up pretty late on our first day. After finding something to eat, we went to the center of Toulouse to visit Saint Sernin, which is a romanesque style church from the 10th and 11th centuries. It is home to hundreds of relics, including six of the apostles! There happened to be adoration starting just as we were begininng our visit, so we spent a few minutes in prayer. The monstrance on the altar with the incense wafting to the ceiling literally looked like an image for an advertisement about the Eucharist or something. 

Heavenly.

The nave of Saint Sernin.

Our Simon in front of the relics of Sts. Simon and Jude!

There were dozens of these busts of saints. Some were obvious reliquaries, some I couldn't tell. 

Reliquaries galore! There are three on this altar, three on the altar to the left, and more side altars with more reliquiaries all around.

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the other side of the church where you can see the tall bell tower.

This is all I have time to update for now. We are doing well. Still adjusting to the time change. I have prayed to Mary that this trip might "work out," occasionally getting more specific with my requests when I have something specific in mind, and she has so graciously "worked out" many little details that I never could have anticipated to ask for. (like the car turning out to be automatic, actually getting to buy a SIM card at the last moment before leaving Toulouse so that I could have proper GPS navigation to Ceret, not to mention how PRICELESS it is to have Rachel with me in about a gajillion different ways... and so on and so on.)

Grosses bises, mes amis!!