Mont St. Clair and Carcassonne

My roommate coughed a lot in the morning; probably he was a smoker. On the other hand, the mild sore throat that I had seemed to have gone. Maybe it was a bout of fatigue, or maybe I got it from the kids.

B turned up around 0830 and we walked up Mont St. Clair where we had commanding views of L'étang de Thau, Sète, and the Mediterranean. We could finally see the lie of the land, and how Sète with its canals sits between the lake and the sea. The first shot is roughly northwards towards the lake, and the second is towards the east with the grand canal in the mid-distance.

Then I grabbed my backpack and we walked down to the city, where a market was in progress. I bought a ½ kg of juicy cherries, a couple of pastries, and some bottled water. We got onto the train to Carcassonne with 5 minutes to spare. 70 minutes later, we were at this inland city. The Canal du Midi runs in front of the train station, just as the map had promised.

This is looking downstream. We were to acquaint ourselves better with the canal the next day so there will be more pictures of it. The town was quite busy. We walked through the mall to the Hotel de la Poste where we took a room for two for 40€. We found a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. The waiter or perhaps the owner barked quoi encore? (anything else?) with a fierce face after every item that we ordered from the menu. After he had disappeared into the kitchen, we had a laugh between ourselves over his winning manners. Perhaps it was the only French phrase he knew.

We located the bicycle rental shop that we intended to return to the next day and bought some supplies for breakfast in the room in the morning. In the evening, when it was cooler, we walked from the modern ville basse over a bridge spanning the river Aude to the ancient Cité de Carcassonne, the fortified castle, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

It looks like the Disney stereotype of a castle with its walls and turrets, probably because they copied the features for their animations. Indeed, as we entered the gate, we overheard a US girl remark in a nasal voice: a real live castle! However, the castle was restored in the 19th century and the roofs were made more conical than authenticity demanded, because the architect came from the North where snow had to slide off roofs.

The castle was one of the last redoubts of the Cathars, a Christian sect that flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries, was deemed heretical by the Catholics and brutally extinguished. Sigh, why is so much of history brutal? Perhaps because nobody records the ordinary peaceful days.

Within the walls is a living city with residents, but no doubt many of them work in the hospitality sector.

An impressive tower catching the rays of the setting sun.

I made a complete circuit between the inner and outer walls. This is one of the corners.

This is looking towards the ville basse.

There are eating and drinking establishments in the walled city. Unfortunately we had left it too late so we decided to come back for dinner the next day.

It was dark when we left, so we were able to admire the walls by floodlight.

The path was illuminated so we didn't have to worry about tripping in the dark. This is a distant view from the river.


We had a late dinner of pizza in the modern city and then called it a night.