Carcassonne
To some people it’s a place to others it’s a tile based German style board game. To us it was both as we ventured to the Languedoc Region for a week.
Carcassonne is beautiful, a medieval city sat high atop a hill with fortress walls intact and remnants of a moat (where they now grow plants). Everything you expect really from that type of place. It is tourist centric and they’ve gone all out with the medieval theme. It gets a little cheesy at times, and you know the prices are hiked up! Off the beaten track always seems to win with us, and we were able to still find reasonable prices for ice creams, lunches and dinners… We tried to stick with the history rather than the tourist stuff. We did however buy the board game which is great fun!
If you think that Carcassonne is just a medieval city you would be wrong, it is also a fully fledged modern city, with the Canal du Midi running straight through. We took a boat tour along the canal. You don’t travel far but you get the experience of going through a few locks (check out where the lock keeper gets to call home, below!) The tour guide was very informative about the history of the area and the canal, and beautiful views were to be had for sure. It was nice to take a break from all the walking and just sit and listen for an hour or two. The rest of carcassone’s streets are lined with shops and cafes and it makes for a lovely day of shopping, eating and exploring. Parking was really easy and the train station is very central.
On our last day we went to a small village called Minerve, unfortunately the weather was not great so almost the whole village was shut. We found the one open cafe in town, with one poor waitress hopelessly trying to serve the hungry and soggy masses!!
I hope you can see how beautiful and breathtaking it was from the pictures though. Even with little to do, we wandered around in between thunderstorms. It was so tranquil to just walk and look at the scenery. It would definitely be worth the visit, preferably on a sunny day!
Note: if driving don’t turn right out of the car park you will take the ultimate scenic route home and not in a good way…
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ThinkingClarely 