🏰 Carcassonne was awesome! Let me share some of my highlights!
I loved our time in Carcassonne this week! We went for a 4 day break which I think was a good length to do the things we wanted with plenty of time to relax. 4 days also feels a good limit for spending time with family all day every day!
It wasn’t planned as a birthday trip but it worked out so it was my birthday while we were away! I don’t think I’d ever been out of the country before on a birthday, so that was quite exciting! I took my cards with us so I could have them up in the hotel room.
I also had never been to France before! I don’t speak the language so I always feel anxious about that, but having been to Québec in the last year I still have some of my Year 9 French nearer the front of my brain than it would normally be! I am surprised how much I retained from school, given I stopped learning it at 12 years old! It’s enough to not be totally at sea when reading signs and menus, but I’m completely lost if someone speaks to me! Thankfully if you’re in tourist spots most people will have decent English to help out!
I actually found it quite fun to realise I knew more than I thought. We had a good time, the countryside is gorgeous and everyone we interacted with relaxed and friendly, so I’d be up for returning to the South of France one day and perhaps for that I’ll practice the language a bit more!
Here are some of my favourites things!
Staying in La Cité Médiévale
It is more expensive, obviously, but I think it was absolutely worth it to be in the centre of the medieval city itself. It was so much more magical and meant we didn’t have to walk up and down the hill to visit (which was not good for my partner’s mother’s hip).
We stayed in the 4 star Hôtel Le Donjon. The walls of our room were stone, and we looked out across terracotta roofs to the turrets and ramparts!
Exploring La Cité
It’s just exciting to walk around a real medieval fortress! The stone street, narrow walkways encircled by the walls, ramparts and turrets made it feel like you were on a movie set. Or as my partner’s Mum kept says “it’s like we’re at Disney land… But it’s all real!”
I love going to places that feel like stepping out of the real world. Carcassonne is definitely on that list along with Venice and Québec’s old town.
You can walk around the lower ramparts most of the way around the city and that alone gives you amazing views of the newer town below and the countryside.
At night it’s much quieter, and quite atmospheric when they turn the lights on!
Chateau Comtal and walking the inner ramparts
For this you need to pay €14 each but it’s absolutely worth it! It’s not often you have the opportunity to walk up close through a fortress that is this well-preserved!
I kept looking through the arrow slots everywhere imagining what it may have been like to try to shoot through them!
And you get amazing views of La Cité as well as the surrounding area.
The Cathedral
Saint Michael of Carcassonne is well worth a look! Not only does it have some awesome gargoyles, but inside is some of the most incredible stained glass!!
I was disappointed that I couldn’t spot any snail gargoyle though.
Exploring La Bastide Saint-Louis
This is the newer town at the bottom of La Cité. We walked down here a couple of times, when we got the train to Narbonne and to visit the art museum. On the latter occasion we had more time and some sun so we explored a bit more and had a nice drink in the square.
We found some more cool gargoyles on churches, and went through the park on our route back to get some slightly different views on the walk back up.
A flying visit to Narbonne
4 days is more than you need for Carcassonne so we decided to make a day trip to Narbonne. It was only 40 mins on the train, and for four of us apparently only €7.. though the cheapness may have had something to do with the awkward times our trains were booked for!
We only had 2 hours there, and the 2 hours during which the Roman storeroom museum was shut! So we couldn’t do that, but if I ever go back I’d love to see it. Instead we walked to the market, had a bite to eat in the square and wandered back to the train via the massive cathedral, standing in original Roman cobbles… a few more cool gargoyles on churches!
The cemetery
You can walk around the cemetery just outside La Cité, and that was a more interesting experience than I expected it to be. I really like the idea of a family tomb that everyone gets added to rather than separate grave sites.
The large tombs were decorated with colourful artificial or ceramic plants, and some with potted plants. The place just felt more communal to me than other cemeteries or graveyards I’ve been to.
Some tombs also had small granite memorial plaques on top. These just sit on top, they’re not attached. They seemed almost like stone cards to me as they were clearly left by different relatives of the deceased. I’d never seen anything like them before, but I thought they’re quite lovely.
The Art Museum
I love a good art museum! This one was fairly small but it still had some cool stuff, and was free to visit.
A campervan wedged into a bridge 😂
On our walk down to the Museum we came across a bit of a commotion with the police and a tow truck. They were trying to remove a campervan that had attempted to go under the low bridge and got themselves truly wedged! God knows why they thought they could get under there, they were a good foot too tall for it!
The roof bit at the front was smashed open. It was quite interesting, you don’t often get to see inside the roof!
Food
I leaned this in my travel notes on food, but food is one of the best bits of travel for me. This trip I had delicious everything!
We found one place – Le Créneau – that did good pizza the others loved so we stuck with that for all 4 evening meals! Thankfully everything I tried on their menu was delicious!
- Cassoulet au confit de canard
- Boulliabaiss
- Onion soup (but not as good as the one I had in Quebec that was 80% cheese!)
- Not very French, but a very good thin crispy base vegetable pizza (after my travel notes on food I did try the pizza!)
I also enjoyed..
- Several crepes
- Croissant for every breakfast
- Mind blowingly good nougat (I would give the shop but I never noted it!)
- Lemon Madelines
- A pistachio macaron a la glace
Playing Carcassonne in Carcassonne!
The reason we went to Carcassonne in the first place is because it has a boardgame named after it! I actually had no idea it was a real place, but when my partner told me and I looked it up I knew we had to go!
Naturally, we were going to have to play while there! We took my copy of the game and picked up two new expansions in French while we were there (I mentioned getting just one the other day in my souvenir notes, but we worked out they were about £5 cheaper there so got the other we had our eyes on!).
The expansions we got are Inns and Cathedrals and Traders and Builders.
On the very rainy day we had the afternoon “free” to ourselves so we played in our hotel room!
Bonus!
This delighful guy in what is, I assume, a Renaissance tennis outfit of some kind (the exhibit was about the Olympics and in French!).
We also couldn’t resist this collection of comic strips about cats across different genres. We can’t read French but it seemed like a fun weird souvenir. I might share about it when I get time to look at it properly (with the aid of Google translate). From flicking through some of it is fucking unhinged 😂
