Day 7: CARCASSONNE!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!

Reasons I wanted to go to Carcassonne:

• the board game Carcassonne. I first played it in my early teens which was nearly ten years ago! The main game I played with my friends for years on end. When, some years back, I realised there actually exists a town called Carcassonne, I decided I HAVE to go there one day.
• The book, Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse (not the model). Situated in the fortified town of Carcassonne, it has two narratives (is that the word?), one about a girl in the Medieval times, and one about a girl today, and how their lives get entwined and so on... SO INTERESTING.
• Well, it's become my obsession.

Were expectations fulfilled? YES. A gorgeous town. Well, the town itself was nothing special – CC really liked it tho because of its little roads and South French-feel. But the fortified castle/town, La Cité, amazing. You had walls to climb on, steps to climb, lots of walking to do, but at the same time you had shops, cafés, creperies, dried fruit-shops (a surprising highlight!!). So pretty, so nice, and so Carcassonney. It just had that feel to it that I... had felt before even going there. You know what I mean? 

The first view...

 

 

 

Dried coconuts? SO GOOD. (I love shops where you can taste the produce.)

A sunny (tho bit too windy) day, and very touristy! My default-language changed from English to French – in the end heard very few French people! We even found a few Kiwis which CC was very happy about – they even donated us a map of the fortified town. Being a Kiwi seems kind of cool in any case (I don't know why...), because in a queue the old Yorkshire-couple behind us started talking to us because they saw CC's passport – next February they're going motorhoming around NZ!

Exciting moment of near-ground aeroplane!!

I was hopeful for a tiny second...

I don't know what you are, but I want you.

Got back to Toulouse for dinner, and now am sat on my top bunk writing this. Tomorrow off to Nimes, via Sète, thanks to our friend Martin's recommendations! I've really enjoyed this Toulouse-hostel though, and we've got to talk to our roomies a bit too: Yesterday talked to this French girl here for work/study interviews in something like art design – she spoke very good English and very fast French – so happy she felt at ease to speak French at the speed of light to me. :) We also have a friendly guy from Boston, and an Asian guy who happened to go to Carcassonne and come back on the same train as us, but just looked intimidated and confused when CC cheerfully tried to talk to him (don't blame him though...)

Our newest roommate (replacing the French girl) just came in an hour ago – an older man (30-40?) who walked in and introduced himself in simple and rigid French as … (didn't take in name) from Catalonia. We quickly introduced ourselves. “D'ou venez vous?” he asked, and from then on kept up the conversation for the next half hour, about work difficulties in Spain, frozen croissants in France (they're actually much better in Barcelona) and how when he stopped drinking milk he stopped being constipated. He has interesting English, lots of vocabulary but he gets a bit mixed up. “My stomach gets a bit floated when I drink milk.” “You know me and my belly it inflates when I drink milk.”  I am thrilled, this is the kind of people you should be meeting in dodgy hostels! Not necessarily looking forward to the coming night though, he is snoring quite loudly...

And with that maybe I should go to bed too.

Bonne nuit!

Emzy

xxx

PS. And if you get mixed up with dates - the day I write the entry is not necessarily the same day I publish it, due to limited access to wifi. So I wrote this yesterday night (25/6).