Carcassonne and Limoges

When I asked Boris what he wanted to see in France he said, "Carcassonne". I had never heard of it before, but apparently there is a board game based on the medieval city and castle. I am really glad he knew about it because it is one of the most amazing castles I have ever seen.

http://www.carcassonne.culture.fr/

Gate and drawbridge

The gate into the city was curved, so that no one could just ram their way straight in.There was a wooden gate and then a metal grate that came from above. The turrets beside the gate had slots facing outwards to shoot enemies, but also had slots facing inwards in case they got that far.

Outer and inner wall

The town was surrounded by a wall, and then another wall was built about 20 feet outside that wall. They used this area to practice jousting and sometimes for shows and fairs. It certainly worked as extra protection.

Dame Carcas

The legend of the name of the town comes from the time when Charlemagne was trying to overtake it. The residents of the town were running out of provisions and were starting to lose the battle when Dame Carcas came up with an idea. She stuffed a pig with grain and tossed it over the wall onto the attacking soldiers. When they saw the pig they thought to themselves that if the townspeople had enough food to throw a pig over the wall that they would not be defeated soon, and so they retreated. The town was saved and they named it after Dame Carcas.

The town had all these little twisty windy streets with very old buildings. Most of them had been turned into tourist shops, but it was fun to walk around.

We found one store with lots of nougat. I'm going to have to buy some - it's everywhere here!

Nougat

There was a shop where you could buy medieval costumes and we saw this little girl and boy come out all dressed up in their finery. They walked into the castle with us and I noticed that their mother was trying to take their picture standing in the door of the gate. They were standing there nicely and all the people behind the mother were waiting behind her for her to take the picture, but for some reason this man decided to stand behind the children. It was obvious that the mother didn't want the man in the picture, so she told the children to move to the side and let everyone through. The boy grabbed the girl's arm and apparently she thought he was being too rough because she complained loudly. When all the people had passed and the boy and girl took up their places in the doorway again, she just had the biggest scowl on her face so her mother said never mind. I told Jim that she should have taken the picture anyway. Any mother watching this knew exactly what she was going through because we have all been there. Looking back now I can laugh at the times that the boys just frustrated the heck out of me!

Children in costume

The Ramparts

City rooftops from the ramparts

While waiting at a cafe for Boris to come out of the castle, Liz and I saw the waiter bring this bun of fries to a man on the other side of the terrace. We couldn't believe our eyes! We decided that we needed one just so that we could take a picture of it! It turned out not to be just fries on the bun, there was a sausage under there somewhere. Later on we thought that it might have been better if we had just asked that man if we could take a picture of his bun!

Bun of Fries

One thing we have learned on this trip - if you are going to a popular tourist spot, go early! You saw the picture of the deserted street when we first entered the city - this is what it looked like as we were leaving!

Too many tourists

We pick up brochures at all the hotels we go to and Liz had found one advertising caves about 30 minutes from Carcassone. She had never been to a cave before so we headed up there. The landscape is all limestone here - they even had cannonballs in the castle that they had formed from the stone. It is soft and water has no problem carving out caves and making stalagmites and tites.

There was a little British boy on the tour and he said the funniest thing - "Mum, are there dragons in here?"

After the caves we headed up to Limoges where we were spending the night. It was about a 4 hour drive - France is a lot bigger than you think. We get places pretty quickly though because Boris drives 140 km on the autobahn. (The speed limit is 130 here).

We stopped at the hotel and then headed into town for dinner. Other than its famous porcelain, we didn't really know much about the city. We had found a geocache listing near Les Halles (the central market, like in Avignon) and decided to try it. We had to answer some questions, one of which was how many Limoges tiles were on the building. Answer - 368. That building is worth a lot of money! We ended up not finding the cache, and didn't have much luck in Tours the next night either. City caches seem to be either very difficult or missing.

We found a really busy circle in the centre of Limoges where we had the most delicious crepes. Jim and Boris had savoury crepes, and Liz and I had dessert crepes because we had had that snack earlier. I only took one picture in Limoges. We have to try to get to these citieswhen it is still light.

Look - the french equivalent of a dollar store. Only it's a 2 euro store. That is about $2.80 Canadian. And it's the same stuff as in our dollar store. Boy, are we lucky.

2 Euro Store

I am trying to keep up with blogging but when we only get back to the hotel at 11:30 or midnight I really don't feel like staying up any later to write a blog. And of course I can only write it when we have internet (ie. in the hotel). Today is Jim's birthday and we are staying in a chateau. I am dying to tell you all about it but I still have yesterday to write about. It would be so great if I could write it in the car - it would mean I could pay less attention to the fact we are going so fast!