We were very excited to be heading to Carcassonne, a walled city in the south Languedoc-Roussillion region of France. First, we had a little touring to do.
We stopped at a couple of the small, castle dominated villages along the Dordogne, walked streets and shopped, and since this is the heart of goose-farming country, I stopped and bought a tin of foie gras at a local farm. Later in the trip I learned that canned meat would be confiscated at the border, so I mailed it home in a box with some other things.
Heading south at last we found a one-lane bridge over a river, and stopped to stretch along the road overlooking a little village. As we took a breath, the church bells went off, and we just enjoyed the music.
In fact, that was one of the real defining “European” moments for us on the trip: listening to the bells from churches, cathedrals and sometimes a castle.
We stopped for lunch and a walk at the old brick city of Albi. Most of the buildings, bridges and the huge cathedral itself are made of brick. It would be a nice city in which to spend a few days.
We got to Carcassonne and found a spot to park down in the grassy moat, outside the walls of Le Cité. We walked in through the crooked gate and bridge system, and it was like entering a very touristy, but really cool time warp. Our little three room guest house was right in the middle of the crooked streets, and our “La Chambre Jaune” (orange room) was about seven to eight hundred years old.
The city of Carcassonne was founded before Christ, but the walls were added and completed around 1200. The walls extend about two miles around the entire city, with over fifty defensive towers.
It is small and crowded during the day, but the evenings are magical. The two nights we spent here were quiet, relaxing times to walk between the walls and outside the old city, across the river and to the regular modern city of Carcassonne below.
So how did we spend our time here? We walked on top of the walls. It is not too hard to imagine the history here. We walked outside the walls, and through every street inside. There are musicians and performers, an old cathedral to walk through, and cafés everywhere.
This is the place where I had my first ever taste of cassoulet. Eating in a café in a thousand year old building, blazing fire roaring as it rains outside, looking out diamond-paned cut glass windows at the distorted image of the castle walls, eating a hot dish of perfectly melded flavors: duck, pork and lamb, with beans and herbs. I have been trying to recreate that dish for the past seven years.
After a couple evenings (and a couple cassoulet meals) it was time to move on. We walked back out the crooked entrance, into the moat, loaded up and watched the towers of the city walls disappear in the rear view mirror.