Carcassonne

We drove from Castres to Carcassonne passing thru Mazamet, hills and woods. This is the road D118. We picked up a hitchhiking young french fellow, he wanted also to reach Carcassonne. We left him in the city center. Carcassonne has a new but not so new part (the lower town) with rectangular, narrow streets and a fortified town called la Cite up over the Aude river with some settlement aorund the fortifications towards the river. It is the fortified town that interests everybody and of course us.

We had difficulty to locate our chambre d'hotes. Finally Burcu called them and got a better hint how to reach there. Our chambre d'hotes is around 2-3 km to La Cite next to some vineyards. We planned to stay 3 nights there, as a base to discover the region nearby. We had a pleasant room. We had some parking problems as we tried to find a place for free near La Cite.

We had only few hours to visit La Cite, but this seemed to be sufficient. There were many tourists inside the fortified town. Although it supposed to be the largest intact medieaval town, once you are inside you realize that it has only a couple of streets, plenty of restaurants and that's all. We visited the castle and took a guided tour to visit the ramparts and towers. The guide was a bit boring perhaps because his french was incomprehensible to me for most of the time. We also visited the basilica St-Nazaire.

For dinner we ate at a restaurant inside La Cite. Alper's first and last experience with cassoulet (I liked it though)