What the Sanctuary says today is simple: go to the baths, where hospitaliers will welcome and guide you through the water gesture, alone or with family or a group, and the water is completely free and cannot be sold. Its pages describe drinking at the spring and washing, the two actions Bernadette was asked to do on February 25, 1858, and they list eighteen drinking fountains beside the Grotto and taps by the arches for filling bottles. The existing pages on how the baths work today and on the water gesture describe the sequence inside.
On the question of coming out dry: pilgrims who were immersed in the old form of the baths often reported that no towels were offered and that their skin dried unusually fast. The Sanctuary does not publish an explanation and does not claim any property of the water, which it says has no therapeutic or specific properties; treat the dry-skin reports as pilgrim testimony, not as a fact the shrine asserts.
Hours vary by page and season. One Sanctuary page gives weekend baths 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. and Sunday afternoons 2:00 to 4:30 p.m.; another gives the water gesture 9:00 to 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. daily. The baths are inside the Sanctuary, which is open 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m., and the Grotto itself can be touched all day except during celebrations. Arrive early in July and August and on big pilgrimage days; waiting is normal.