Carcassonne, France

Wednesday 13th March

We started off the morning with brunch before packing up and saying goodbye to our lovely little apartment and Montpellier.

After a few hours and a beautiful train journey through the french country side we arrived in the little hilltop town of Carcassonne.

We made the short walk from the train station to our accommodation and were absolutely blown away! It was a beautiful old estate home that has been converted into apartments. Our room is gorgeous! Beautiful high ceilings, large french windows, beautiful door frames and a grand staircase leading up to it all!

We went for a wander around the town and then popped back for lunch. We had bought everything to make hotdogs including splashing out the 1.30 euro for some mustard.

Now, I learnt something today.

Lesson one: Not all mustard is the same.

Lesson two: Dijon mustard is hot and not hotdog mustard.

Lesson three: always translate the bottle even if you think you know what your buying. If we had we would have realised that it did indeed say we were buying extra strong mustard...

We sat down for lunch and I had lathered the mustard on. Oh. My. Word. BIG mistake. It was BURNING through my nose! My NOSE!! I didn't know food could do that?!

With tears in my eyes I reached for google translate and found my fatal mistake"fine & forte" does not mean "fine and smooth", it means "fine & STRONG".

After lunch we had another wander a bit further out and glimpsed sight of the incredible castle on the hill and the double fortified city within! We can't wait to explore it tomorrow!

It turned into a bit of a rainy afternoon so we made our way back to the apartment via ducking into a few little boutique stores along the way.

We spent the evening cozied up inside our estate!

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Thursday 14th March

We woke up to dark skies and the sound of rain.

It was meant to clear up later in the day, so we delayed our plans to visit the fortified city, Cité de Carcassonne, and instead ran down to the street to get a fresh baguette for brunch, trying our hardest to stay dry.

After a lovely brunch (which did not include mustard) we decided to just brave the now intermittent rain and headed out.

We slowly made our way up the hillside to enter through the walls of the city. It started to rain again on the way up so we were darting from archway to archway!

Oh. My. Goodness. I Love Carcassonne so much! We walked through the walls and stepped into the cutest little city which felt like something from another time. All the buildings were amazing medieval architecture, and the streets were all cobblestone. I felt as though we were in a movie. The whole concept of a medieval walled city with a castle, an abbey, everything they needed is just so intriguing.

We walked around and saw the amazing castle within the innermost wall. It was incredible! The architecture of it was just astounding. How people built such a structure that long ago and it still be standing today is amazing!

We walked down into the moat, and then found our way to the outer wall where we climbed up onto a viewing platform and got a great view along the castle as well as a view of the outside city.

The next couple of hours were spent walking all around the citadel, down every little cobblestone street that we saw, popping into cute shop after cute shop in between showers of rain!

We made our way across to the other side of the city and there was a draw bridge, like an actual draw bridge out of the city, so of course we crossed that!

There was actually a little break in the rain so on our way back through the city we got a nutella crepe and sat in front of the chateau enjoying our treat with a view.

From here we visited the cathedral which was beautiful.

Then we continued to wander and explore the streets!

Eventually we made our way out and back down the hill, and headed back to the apartment for cheese and crackers as the sky grey even darker and the rain came down again.

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Friday 15th March

We checked out of our amazing accommodation, dropped our bags downstairs into a “storage room” behind a red curtain (not dodgy at all) and made our way back to the citadel to explore Carcassonne castle!

We spent the morning exploring the castle, once again having it almost to ourselves! It was such a cool fortress, we were free to run all along the walls and the ramparts and along the wood boardwalk things that they dropped rocks out of if people tried to penetrate the castle.

It was massive as well! The walls of course go all around the city, but then there a walls just surrounding the castle as well! Within the castle walls is the castle, big squares, and an amphitheatre. It felt very very Winterfell like.

We then went inside and there was a short video playing of the history of the Carcassonne and the Castle which was fascinating. Within another room was a small museum of some of the artefacts from the castle, and what it would have been like inside, as well as architectural information. It was such a cool castle, well worth going into.

All too soon it was time to leave our castle and hop on the train to Bordeaux!