Visiting Carcassonne was a bit confusing at first. I must be really bad at searching the Internet because I couldn’t find anywhere which bus would get us from the train station to the Cite (aka the fortified medieval city & castle). Turns out Carcassonne has a nice, cheap little bus system – it would have been helpful to know that the bus we caught after twenty minutes of walking would pass right by the bus stop in front of the train station. Ah well, at least breakfast was found during that 20 minutes of semi-useless walking. The Cite was interesting, although not as entertaining as I suppose it might be when catering to tourists at the height of summer. We roamed the little medieval streets, stopped in a church, made friends with a cat, and explored the ramparts before the Castle itself opened.
Meeting the cat was really nice. Although I’m surrounded each day by people walking their dogs, I rarely get to pet an animal here, much less pick one up. I was surprised when we happened upon a gorgeous coffee and vanilla covered female who actually rubbed against my legs and let me cuddle her for a couple of minutes. Among the things I will look forward to in returning to the US will be the opportunity to be in the same household with pets again.
The Castle was bigger than I thought, not that it seemed small, but we easily spent a couple of hours walking through rooms and up and down towers while stopping to read all the little informational panels. I think my favorite part of the castle visit was walking through these wooden catwalk things that linked the towers. It felt dangerous to be supported by thin wooden planks hundreds of feet in the air, but it also felt thrilling to look out over the ville basse (lower city of Carcassonne).
The real gem for me while we were in Carcassonne was stumbling across La Cure Gourmand, a candy, chocolate, and cookie shop well known here in France. When I was in Aix, I passed one every day on my way to school and always managed to resist going in. Unfortunately they don’t have a branch here in Toulouse :-( Having Martha with me was the perfect excuse to get to go into the one we found in Carcassonne. Delicious treats practically called out to me…I wanted to buy everything, especially the calissons from Aix ! Martha and I limited ourselves to a few cookies and left with the knowledge that there was a branch in Paris. If we were lucky enough to find the one in Paris we would begin and end our trip with sweet treats!
While we waited on the shuttle to take us from the Cite to the Carcassonne airport, Martha and I sat in the warm sun eating ham and cheese paninis, nibbling our cookies and we finished the chocolates we’d purchased in Toulouse the evening before. It was a simple but scrumptious lunch and a lovely day spent visiting medieval fortified Carcassonne.
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