Carcasonne and The Longest Train Delay Ever

The day was Wednesday the 30th of May. The challenge was: to experience three small towns in the south of France in just one day.

Well not quite. 'Exist in' is probably more accurate than 'experience'.

'Plan' was accurate though. We had our train ticket to Carcasonne from Narbonne all booked, and we had timetables with train times circled for how we were going to negotiate from there. The plan was: Leave our bags at the Narbonne hotel, train to Carcasonne, Carcasonne it up for the day, train back to Narbonne to grab our bags (yes, hoof it the 25mins back to the hotel just to get our stuff then hoof it another 25mins back to the station... Needless to say, no left luggage facilities available at the station or at Carcasonne), THEN get a train from Narbonne to Sete. If you look at the geography it makes a little more sense. What doesn't make sense is why we were in Narbonne rather than already in Carcasonne the day before. This, I cannot answer. There was a reason, once upon a time. Anyway Narbonne was lovely for a night...

BUT I DIGRESS. I'm always digressing. It's an odd word. It seems from now on today will be largely like a children's picture book. Seems appropriate...

Maxi pain au chocolat, consumed in the pretty park beside the river in Narbonne, was deemed an appropriate breakfast (once coffee was added to the mix at the station).

Without bags in tow the stroll to the station in the warm Southern France sun was quite pleasant.

On the way we poked our noses into the Narbonne daily covered market. It seemed to be bustling with lively bustliness.

Narbonne train station. Very typical look for the train stations in these parts, we have come to learn.

And just like that we were off! Racing towards Carcasonne!

Arrived at Carcasonne at a respectable hour of the morning. Already fairly warm. We headed to the info desk as recommended by the guidebook and successfully procured a free map and instructions for the fastest way to the old city, place we had come to see.

"New Carcasonne" was also a fairly lively and interesting place. But weren't there to eat or shop! Not yet anyway. We had come to see Castles!

Testament to the fact that it is the 'off season' that this square near where you cross the bridge to Old Carcasonne could be photographed with nobody on it.

Greg leads the way over the bridge.

Except for when he pauses to take my picture by the pretty river!

Then! There it was: Old Carcasonne in All It's Mighty Medievilness

The approach was through even older looking cobbly French streets.

The Hungry Hordes of tourists swarmed near the front drawbridge entrance.

By the front entrance, the Bust of Carca. 

Legend has it that once the castle was under siege and almost out of food. This clever lass Carca had the rather mental idea to take their last pig and stuff it full of their last measure of wheat then throw the pig recklessly off of the wall. When the enemy saw the pig used thus they assumed that Carcasonne must still have oodles of food left, and that continuing the siege was futile, so they packed up toodled away. When the inhabitants of Carcasonne (then called something much less interesting) saw the enemy leaving they rang the bells and the bells sounded out. (sounded =sonne in French) ... and thus the town was then renamed Carca-Sonne.

(Actually historians think it's called Carcasonne due to it's links in Latin or something to the word for Castle. But they are poopy and ruining a good story. Unless you love pigs, then it's a bit of a horrible story regarding the poor pig.)

Crossing the drawbridge entrance. Made crooked to prevent charges with long battering rams.

Greg and I took the guidebook's suggestion and immediate set out to explore the walls and ramparts.

Greg being an archer and protecting the city via the arrowslits in the wall.

Just chillin' on the ramparts of an ancient castle. Just casually.

Pigeons in man-made pigeonholes.

The walls thoroughly explored, we found the carcasonne cathedral next. A complicated little place due to the complicated religious history that went on here. I forget the specifics, but anyway in it's present day form it's mostly Gothic with an old hint of Roman, I think.

Inside was suitable gloomy and medievil.

Pretty rose windows.

We were pretty much done and about to head outside again, when we heard music. Acapella male voices singing presumably hymns in French The 'surround-sound' quality of it had us convinced that it must be a CD, until we looked towards the alter and went "oh!" and rather quickly take a seat to listen properly:

They sung two songs through and we were feeling suitably awed. Until they did their sales pitch for their CDs that they were selling from the front pew in the church...

Back out in the sunshine we were greeted by a the lovely old medievil town that is Carcasonne, within the walls.

We took the guidebook's recommended route through the various streets, passing many touristy but lovely boutique shops full of things you don't really need and/or can't afford and/or couldn't transport home anyway. But all beautifully presented and often smelling beautiful/yummy.

Then we headed over the entrance to the 'castle within a castle'

We had to queue for some time to get our ticket (the first and only time you have to spend money to see something) and put up with listening to the arrogant young English chaps in the queue behind us for too long... (sorry to be negative but they just had some smart ass remark or other for everything that happened/was said around them and seemed to think that because they had all enjoyed the benefit of learning French in school that that made them far superior to all the other tourists who were trying their best - including us!). 

ANYWAY teeth grinding experience over we headed to over to enjoy exploring the castle.

Greg pushed all the 'if you'd like to hear more about...' buttons on the audioguide.

Scale model of Carcasonne! Some poor dude's life work right there.

On the ramparts surrounding the castle.

Nice views!

Peek a Boo!

The stunning views were probably the best bit! The castle itself was interesting to explore but didn't make for interesting photos. 

After we finished in there, as usual, it was getting rather late for lunch and we were starting to wilt in the heat. I'd previously mapped out a place in New Carcasonne that was recommended for lunch, but in the moment I couldn't be bothered going all the way back down there, when there were so many nice eateries right here in Carcasonne.

We knew they would be overpriced and not as good as elsewhere, but how back can it be? We wondered.

Well Greg did alright. I basically ate straight sodium disguised as various types of food. The worst thing in the heat!

Mine was a cassoulet. I'm sure it would have tasted good if the top of the salt shaker hadn't fallen off when the chef was seasoning the dish... however there was a leg of duck in there and I must say the meat was nice as long as it didn't get too much of the rest of it on it. Greg seemed pretty happy with his Large Sausage and Chips but we both knew that as far as eating in France was concerned, this was poor indeed. Sorry to rag on the English some more but we suspected that this restaurant was trying to cater to the English tourists?

Ah yes, the Redeeming Feature of the meal. They had Ile Flotantte. All is (almost) forgiven!

Another wee wander and we decided to call it a day. Lunch already a distant nightmare, we enjoyed the photo ops provided by the view as you leave Carcasonne.

We still had about an hour before our train so we mooched about a bit in New Carcasonne (it's not really called that). 

*Jane's postcard posting adventure in Carcasonne*

I had post office success at last! You may recall me saying somewhere back in Turkey that I had written some postcards? Well I finally managed to post them! We found the la Poste and I got out my phrasebook to the 'postage' pages then bravely went inside. I was recalling the confusion and unfriendly postage staff back in Greece in 2009 and was prepared for anything!

Well crap. I'd figured out how to say I wanted to post two postcards to New Zealand, but... who the heck did I say it to? There was about four or five different kinds of counter strewn haphazardly about the room all with different French words hanging above them, . Frantically I started trying to look up the names in my little dictionary.

"Bonjour? *blurble in french*" from a nice French man who I can still only assume worked there and wasn't just being nice to the panicking foreigner.(For the cynics amongst you, Greg was with me the entire time, obviously my boyfriend).

"Bonjour, pardon, je ne comprends pas, parlez-vous anglais?" Becoming my standard response when I know that just saying "oui" and smiling won't suffice.

"Oh, a little" The usual French response. In his case, it was an accurate observation. Not that it mattered, it was easy enough to communicate what I wanted. I'm standing in a post office, with two postcards, addressed to New Zealand. I probably could have communicated effectively what I needed just by showing him the cards and burping out nursery rhymes.  

Nice French man checked with a Postal Lady about something then led me to a machine. The machine weighs the postcards, you push some buttons (Nice French man pushed the buttons as the instructions were all in French), you put in a minuscule amount of money and voila! Your stamps are printed. 

He pointed at the pictures of Turkey on the cards and said "Oh long way! Big trip?"

"Oui, big trip!" 

(I love attempts to have friendly conversation when language is limited! So much laughing and smiling and always the underlying concern that you and the other person are talking about completely different things... kind of like talking to a confused patient with no voice because of their tracheostomy in the ICU.)

Nice French man gave the postcards to Postal Lady and assured me it was all sorted. So Mum and Dad if you don't get your postcards in a few weeks it's Nice French Man's fault not mine ok?

I also bought new postcards so that I can do another round soon. IF you want me to send you a postcard you really should email/facebook me your address, even if you think I already have it. 

Back at Carcasonne station, after a long hot day. I was so dozey that Greg was able to dress me up in his hat Fresh Prince of Bel Air style and take a photo.

Back at Narbonne we did all of the pre-planned hoofing to get our bags. We arrived back at the station with probably just enough time to catch the 18:09 train to Sete if we ran, but we decided to take it easy and wait for the 18:31 train. In hindsight, it was a poos call.

It arrived on time and we clambered on. And waited. The board said a delay of 5mins. Then ten minutes. Then one hour. When it said two hours I knew it before Greg checked the boards because the lady over the speaker had said *blurble in French du heure" and a digusted responding mutter of "du heure" had gone around the carriage followed by many passengers getting on their celphone or abandoning ship.

By the time it finally left, we looked like this:

And the sun was here:

By the time we arrived in Sete, the sun was here:

...but it was quite pretty.

It was another hoof from the station to the hotel, but eventually, we made it, in the dark.

At long last we found a bed! Exhausted and not hungry, we skipped tea and hit the sack!

Adios Spain, Bonjour France!

On this day we said good bye to Spain and headed off (rather early) to France. 

Today was to be the first day of our 15 day/over two months rail pass so it was time to test it out find out how it all worked! As we had already found our way to the station the day before, getting there was fairly straightforward if more awkward with bags in tow! Once there it there was a wee bit of rigmarole as it was an international train connection – our bags had to go through a security check and then we were kept in a 'holding pen' with the other hopeful passengers until we were allowed down to the actual platform to catch the train.

The Train in Spain arrives on time Now and Again.

The train travel itself was fantastic – as our seats were reserved there were no hassles getting a spot and there was a space in each carriage for luggage. Greg found the journey a lot easier on his stomach although it was unfortunate that we weres seats that meant we travelled backwards! There were even power points between each seat, a toilet, and if we had cared to explore more, there was a cafeteria on there as well.

Happy but quite alseep still!

We changed at Figueres Vilafont from the Spanish train to a French TGV one in which we were in a slightly less spacious upstairs carriage. Lovely views of France and plenty of time relax (and catch up on the blog!)

Lovely green countryside as we travelled into France.

Anyway after about four hours we arrived successfully at Narbonne. We got off and then it was a little bit like “Oh wow, now we're in France. How do we speak French? How do things work here?”

What I thought would be a pretty short walk from the station to our hotel turned out to be closer to 25 minutes on not always stellar footpaths in the very hot sun. Very hot sun! (We found out later it was 28 degrees)

(I'm on another train at the moment and someone has their cat in a box! It keeps meowing...poor thing!)

We finally got to our accommodation. The man at the front desk was somewhat unsmiling but stiffly polite and allowed us to leave our bags until we could properly check in (it was only 12pm). So we ventured out once more, phrasebook in hand, to find some lunch and figure out how the heck to survive in France. I couldn't even remember why I'd chosen Narbonne rather than go straight to Carcasonne, but never mind. The town was very sweet to wander through, and not at all touristy.

Pretty river winds it's way through town. Although the river's course had begun to change in the middle ages, there had been some more recent to work to make sure that some water still made it's way to town.

We meandered for a while looking for food, feeling quite nervous. We had heard that the French do 'menu's like the Spanish – a three course meal with various options for a set price – but as we walked past places they had their menus on display... of course totally in French. Eventually Greg looked at a place with nice tables outside in the shade and said what about here? Nervously we approached. I had tried to memorise 'table for two please' and attempted to start saying it, phrasebook in hand, but the man standing out front spoke english and smilingly directed us to sit down.

Hooray! Food is coming!

Feeling relieved that ordering wouldn't be totally dependant on our rather limited/non existant French (except for counting to ten, I had that sorted - thanks Michael!) we relaxed. The menus were given to us along with our cutlery. Then our waitress came along. She gurbled cheerfully at us in French and I, assuming she had asked what we wanted, confidently said that “I would like Menu please” in French. We kind of thought the Menu would just be a set thing. Unfortunately it turned out that each course had options, and the options were blackboard options rather than written on the permanent menu so it we had to chose from what the waitress told us. Hearing it verbally it was even harder to figure out than seeing it written! The waitress valiently used what little english she had, scoured the phrasebook and even typed stuff into the french–english dictionary on my phone. Eventually I found the phrase “what would you recommend” and to everything she said we agreed happily, no idea what we were going to get! But it was smiles all round – she was extremely nice and patient.

Surprise salad! It turns out chevre is goat's cheese!

In the end we got a goats cheese salad, which Greg really liked but the cheese was a little strong for me, but overall not totally unpleasant. Followed by lamb chops (“cutlets” the waitress had been saying over and over in such a thick French accent that we didn't realise she was using English!) with a mountain of rather nice chips.

...and when the waitress says "Cottelot" she is actually speaking English and saying "Cutlet"... lamp chops!

Kafe... :)

For dessert we got something we are now very familiar with: “Ile Flotantte” - floating island - which is a whipped egg white meringue floating in custard with a caramel sauce – it's just genius! I got a couple of 'kafe's' also to counter the early start we'd had.

Ile Flottante!

When we were at last finished, Greg called the waitress over and haltingly read out “can I have the bill please?” from the phrasebook while the waitress grinned over his shoulder, already able to see what he was saying. “Well done!” she cried.

All in all we were feeling pretty pleased with our success (although to fair it was all thanks to the lovely waitress – she got a decent tip!!) at our first real French interaction. I was pretty happy to finally be somewhere where everybody wasn't already fluent in English – as long as people are friendly and easygoing about language barriers trying to communicate with the locals in their own language is always more fun! We decided that we had done well to start our France adventure in a little town in the south where english speaking tourists are more of a novelty and less of a nuisance! 

Just wandering round town.

That lunch was pretty much the highlight of the day. We wandered around for a bit and found some of the 'sights' of Narbonne which were closed up tight. Then we figured it was time to go back and check in. On the way I made use of a public toilet in a park – 50cents for a rather unpleasant experience in which I contemplated the possibilities of contracting HIV or Hepatitis.

Pretty tree lined avenues and old school French buildings abounded, just casually.

When we got back we were allowed into our room. The man at the desk even cracked a smile, so maybe he'd had his afternoon nap or something. The room was a decent size and quality, with good internet reception. We chilled out for several hours. We were defintely starting to need a bit of a holiday from our holiday at this point!

Once we felt up to it we ventured out once more. We found the supermarket and bought some chilled water and some random french potato chips (according to the dictionary one was mustard flavour and the other was flavoured with lancers (as in jousting) which was fairly uninformative..eventually we discovered that they were the same as ready salted).

The mustard ones were pretty gross if you got a heavily seasoned one!

We went back to the train station to make sure our tickets for Carcasonna and Sete the next day were sorted. The sweet old lady in front of me in the queue tried to make conversation with me. She was pointing at another woman who was being served and saying 'Picasso' amongst other Frenchy things. The woman's dress was a bit like a Picasso painting so I'm guessing that's what she was remarking on. My weak apologetic protest of “Je ne comprends pas... Anglais...” was largely ignored and she just kept repeating herself in a friendly but insistent way. It was funny though – especially when the information she was trying to impart was hardly essential (I think). In the end once I kind of figured what she was on about I smiled and said “ah, oui!” and that seemed to placate her.

At the desk I copped out and immediately asked the lady “parlez-vous anglais?” - I was prepared with key phrases in case she didn't, but the bottom line was what I wanted was a little complicated and I was willing to bet her english however poor was still better than my French! She smiled and said something in French that I decided was “a little” (It seems to be the standard response to that question – when it isn't a flat out no - even when they're fluent in english). Between her, Greg and I we managed to figure all our tickets out and again, the teller was very friendly, smiley and patient. We got our tickets, grabbed some timetables and headed out. Today was all about successfully communicating!

Outside the cathedral.

Then we decided to see if we could visit Narbonne's Cathedral, it's main 'attraction', built when Narbonne was a significant point of trade due to the river and it's proximity to various regions in France and The Spanish border. The cathedral never got finished because the river's course changed away from Narbonne as did the politics and the money wasn't there anymore. Unfinished it's still a fairly imposing sort of building. We couldn't go in because we arrived too late – it was already after 6pm. But it was still worth a wee admire.

Greg and the sundial fountain by the cathedral.

Courtyard beside the cathedral. We wandered through it until we got yelled at in French by some dudes. "Pardon" is a useful word.

A fountain near where we found dinner.

We dropped all the stuff off at home then headed back out again to wander around Narbonne's shops and buy some dinner. I got some postcards and a new SD card for my camera (already filled two up!). Not too hungry after the massive lunch we found a patisserie selling filled rolls. I managed to point at the rolls we wanted and say “I would like this please” but unfortunately yet again there were options. Luckily the lady behind the desk figured we were english “chicken or tuna?” she asked. We sat at the tables and nommed our rolls (bagettes?). 

The square where we eventually found dinner.

As we finished we saw the shop man was packing up the tables so we stood up to clear off so he could close. But he stopped us and asked where we were from. We told him New Zealand, he was geniunely surprised we would come so far to visit Narbonne. Then, using broken english he managed to make reference to the rugby world cup (he confusingly said 'next year your country win the world cup'). We had both forgotten the final was between France and NZ! Of course rugby is probably the only reason a dude in the middle of nowhere in France would have heard of our little country! He tried to ask us if we liked another kind of sport, but he didn't know the english word for it. He flexed his arms and stomped, so maybe it was wrestling? Sumo wrestling? American football? We were pretty lost and of all the conversations to try and have with a language barrier involved, one about sports was never going to be a winner with Greg and I. So we politely extracted ourselves with many thanks and headed off home.