Southern France
 

 
 

 

Exploring Southern France

 
The walled city of Carcassone

Carcassone

A fresh day, and we are on the road to Carcassone. I was pretty excited about this place when Lin-Wei told me about it. Carcassone is a medieval walled city, and it was totally cool. We got there early in the morning (to beat the other tourists, our usual strategy), and began to explore the city. We got in line for tickets to the central keep, and lucky us, this was the day of the week that was free for all French museums. Score! So we took the English tour, walking through the keep, along many of the walls, and into the towers. If you like castles, you'd dig this place. After the tour, Lin-Wei wanted to play in the moat (which is just green grass now), and once again...walk around the wall. Her and those walls. Carcassone was much, much smaller than Verona, so the walk around the wall probably only took an hour.

 
No naked people by this wall...yet
Inside the walled city it is mostly restaurants and shops. They told us that there were about six actual residents of the walled city (the rest of the people live in the more modern city at the base of the hill). So we planned on having lunch there. After walking around for a bit more, not finding anything that struck our fancy, we finally found the perfect restaurant. Or at least the restaurant with the perfect name. Was there anywhere else we could go for lunch?

We had pretty much seen all of the city at this point, and not finding any aqueducts, we decided to head back to Montpellier and explore that city a little bit more. But just as we exited the city gates, it was pure pandemonium again! I guess naked people and walled cities just go together... This was our last day in Montpellier, and it was with a certain sense of nostalgia that we took our last tour of the town. And for some reason that I could put my finger on, I wished my friend Paul was there.

That night we had trouble deciding where to eat, but we picked an outdoor place off the main square. Since it's six months since our trip and the writing of this log, it is hard for me to pinpoint exactly what we did to annoy the waiter at this restaurant, but throughout the whole (2 hour) meal I couldn't help but pick up on a somewhat hostile vibe. And this was our first experience with anything like that for the whole trip. But anyway, we couldn't do anything right. We had a lot of trouble ordering our food, which really annoyed him. When the first course came, I didn't have any silverware. I waited for a bit to try and flag him down. I gave up, and grabbed a set from the table next to us, and right then he appeared with food for another table. Glancing first at the table w/o a set of silverware, then at us, he continued on with a huff. Throughout the rest of the meal he was no where to be found, and we probably waited 15 minutes for the check. But we were more amused than anything else, so we took it in stride. Also, we could see the crepe shop just on the other side of the road, and we knew there were some chocolate crepes with our names on them just 10 seconds away.

With a last glace around the square, we bid farewell to Montpellier, vowing to return again one day. And to not take silverware from another table. And to maybe have just one more chocolate crepe.

  Carcassone is the third most-vistied place in France, after Paris and Mont St. Michele
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