Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite

REVISED August 17, 2024

Yikes! Bedbugs! Or are they? Our last day in Bordeaux we found little bug bites - on my face and upper arm; on Chris’s arms and legs. Bedbugs? Fleas? Or those fruit flies that hovered in the kitchen? (Not as gross as it sounds - much of France is not air conditioned, so you have to keep the windows open. Bugs are going to fly in.)

Otherwise it was a nice apartment. We let the host know; he gave us a break; and I didn’t ruin his rating. 

But I  digress. Before we went to Bordeaux, we stayed a couple of days in Le Mans. Why Le Mans? Cathedral High School, Chris’s alma mater, was founded by the order of the Holy Cross, which was founded by Basile Moreau in Le Mans. After a little research, we found his church, Notre Dame de Sainte Croix (Our Lady of the Holy Cross) and paid our respects to Basil Moreau. 


Moreau was a man of vision and action. He was admired but also took a lot of flak. One description in French said his ideas were “cropped” and “mutilated” by his critics (I love the hyperbolic metaphors of the French language!). But it also notes that he learned humility at the hands of his critics. We took the hagiography with a grain of salt. [Sorry: Can't get this to realign!]

I may have mentioned that we’ve been going to an English-speaking church in Paris because of my issues with incense. We went to the Saturday vigil service at the church close to us in Le Mans: Église Notre Dame de la Couture. We guessed there would be no incense - and there wasn’t. We were awe-struck at how old the church is. In fact, many of the structures in Le Mans originate with the Romans dating back to the 6th century. Here’s the church from outside. 


Here’s the wall of the church - inside the arch is probably Roman in origin:

  
Under the nave is a Roman crypt housing the remains of Saint Bernard:

If you haven’t already noticed, our trip is focusing on the churches and cathedrals we encounter in France. With that in mind, here are a few pictures of the Cathedrale de Saint Julien du Mans, in the Old City of Le Mans. 




This last is the original pre-Vatican altar made into a chapel - one of about 15!

From Le Mans we set off for Bordeaux. We got into Bordeaux late Monday evening. We’d been going full tilt, so we needed a day to rest. Even so, between grocery shopping and walking the waterfront, we still racked up a lot of steps. Here are a few waterfront pictures:
Le Miroir d’Eau - The mirror of water. Fun place to cool off on a square near the waterfront.
Le Pont de Pierre - not a bridge named for Pierre or Peter, but a bridge of stone (pierre in French).
 
We loved Bordeaux and didn’t have enough time there. We had a an Airbnb right in the old part of the city. Wednesday we took a guided tour that I found on Airbnb (thanks, Remy, for this suggestion!). Our guide was very knowledgeable about the history of Bordeaux and of France. We started with the Cathedrale de Saint Andre and ended with a monument to the Girondists, a moderate fraction of the French Revolution. One of the “moderate” positions of the Girondists was that rights be conferred only to the wealthy and established, as opposed to the Jacobin position that rights be universal. 

The Cathedral

Monument to the Girondistes
We’re off to Marseille next, although I’m planning another blog about thoughts and impressions and silly stuff (maybe even a little gross stuff) we’ve seen here. Until then!

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