Carcassonne

Our wifi has been terrible to non existent for the last 6 days so I have a lot of catching up to do.

On Tuesday, April 12 we took the train to Carcassonne. Maybe I should more accurately describe it as the train from hell. We knew it would be a long travel day with a change of train required, but maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t know what was ahead of us. The train from Nice to Marseille was uneventful. The train arrived in Marseille late though, so we had to run to our next train. Our reserved seats were in Coach 1, the last car on the very long train. We arrived, huffing and puffing, to discover Coach 1 was closed for an unknown reason. The train was getting ready to leave so we got on Coach 2. A train employee lead us through 2 and into 3, indicating we should go into a compartment there that was already crowded with nowhere to put our luggage. He motioned to us to put our suitcases in an empty space next to the compartment. The space had puddles of urine, or what looked like urine, on the floor. Nope. He was getting impatient with us and he grabbed one of the bags to do it himself. Then he saw what we saw and understood. He then took us to the compartment next to it where we sat with a very quiet woman and a family of 3 with a rambunctious little kid. The parents were constantly on the phone, sometimes on speaker or FaceTime. The kid was coughing all over the place and the parents apparently flunked out of How To Properly Wear A Mask school. Did I mention how small the train compartment was? We had 1st class tickets to attempt to stay away from people as much as possible. This was a 2nd class car with no spacing allowed.

Thankfully the day improved. We got off the train in Carcassonne and walked to our hotel. After checking in we walked up to the medieval Cité. It was on the road less traveled. Small streets, a footbridge that practically sat in the water, dirt roads, steep stone stairs…but we finally made it.

Once we arrived we did a audio guided tour of the castle and then walked around the entire center. I had been there before and as I predicted, Jim really enjoyed it. After we had some dinner we made our way back to to the hotel just before it got dark. There was no way I was walking that way in the dark.