Castling in Carcassone

We took the train from Paris to Carcassone on Saturday, December 11. After a week of standing on the Paris Metro and constantly looking for those few public washrooms in Paris, it was comforting being on the train knowing we had reserved seats and were only a few steps from a bathroom (a real necessity when traveling with kids). The question that remained, Would southern France give us warmer and sunnier weather than we found in Paris? After only hour on the high speed train, the grey skies started to break up and by the time we reached the Mediterranean coast it was clear blue skies and 15 degrees!

At the train station in Carcassonne we were met by Lester, the man we were renting our house from for our stay. After a mix up with a taxi, Lester took us on a short walking tour of the historic downtown. As we made our way to our home for the week we were greeted with a spectacular view of the castle. Our house for the week was well located, just a 5 minute walk from the castle's main gate. The house was a typical timeless stone house found in France that could be 40 or 400 hundred years old. Our host was very nice and helped us familiarize with the area and our new home and he had two more surprises, a bottle of the local wine and free telephone calls to Canada!

After settling in we began our ritual of looking for a grocery store and getting ourselves provisioned for the week. We took the 15 minute walk from our house to downtown, crossing a 14th century stone bridge over the Aude River to get there. As it was still sunny and warm, we took time to explore a bit and enjoy the festive Christmas atmosphere and the more relaxed pace than Paris. The city has an annual Christmas festival with carnival rides, food and craft stalls, skating rink, and of course Pére Noël. And on a sunny afternoon lots of people were out enjoying themselves.

Sunday morning we took it easy, slept late and had a leisurely breakfast before heading off for our first of several visits to the castle and the historic old city of Carcassonne. We were not disappointed. The castle is protected by 2 sets of walls. An inner wall dating from the Roman age and an outer wall built in the Medieval age. Together there were 3 kilometres of walls and the boys took to exploring the outer walls and of course playing on them with their imaginary games. From a top of these walls we could see the Pyrenees, a reminder of how close we were to the Spanish border and the reason for the castle's existence.

Over the course of the week we made several more visits to the castle, exploring its inner walls, keep, an old cathedral and of course the shops and restaurants. Through these visits we learned that the castle had been restored in the late 19th century by the French government as part of a program to preserve some of its great buildings like this castle and the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

Later in the week, things turned cold and we had some snow and a couple of cold wet days. We took advantage of this to try and catch up on the boys school work but also took time to enjoy some amazing hot chocolate and get pictures taken with Pére Noël. Soon it was the end of another week and our time in Carcassonne was coming to a close. Friday afternoon we visited some of the food stalls and tried a fried pastry called churros which were quite tasty and no doubt very fattening. We enjoyed a nice meal in a small restaurant inside the castle.

Saturday, with clothes all washed and packed it was time to enjoy a last sunny day in Carcassonne before we took a night train to Paris on our way to Germany. We took the time to visit the castle one last time and while the boys explored the walls again, Susan and I took some time to shop for souvenirs. I returned to find that the boys  had discovered a new hidden passage in the walls and were sharing their discovery with some English kids they had met. Then it was off to the Christmas festival in the town square of the new city. We had promised the boys they could enjoy some of the carnival rides before we left. And as we left the festival to leave we decided to try roasted chestnuts -- we had always heard about them but had never tried them. After a quick lesson on how to eat them we had our taste and realized that we should have stuck with the churros.

As we left on the train, we all agreed it was a good week for us in Carcassonne, enjoying the castle, Christmas atmosphere, hospitality, and the slower pace of life. But as our luck would have it, train schedules and weather conspired against us and we awoke the next morning to another snowy wet day in Paris.