Another magnificent, two-day update for you today. First we explore the walled city of Carcassonne, and then we drive to Toulouse, where I get food poisoning, or something. Woo!
Tuesday – May 11th – Carcassonne
Charlotte and I wake up a bit late (even for us), and decide that we want to spend another night in Carcassonne. The lady who owns the house is amenable to that, so all is well. We walk over to the old city, a walled medieval village that’s underwent a major restoration in the 19th century and is now bustling with shops, restaurants, cafes, and the like. Our first stop: the central courtyard, where we pick a cafe and enjoy delicious salads for brunch.
Once done with our food, we set about exploring old city in earnest. There’s an entire tour of the city’s central castle to take, which includes a small museum of mostly sculptural artwork. We check that out, taking numerous pictures, and then circle back around to the Cathedral, which is gigantic and has tons of interesting architectural details and stained glass work. During this time, we also swing into a couple of shops, which sell everything from leather goods, to medieval outfits and weaponry, to ugly glass statues of mostly-naked fairies with huge boobs. Overall, Carcassonne’s old city proves to be an odd but enjoyable combination of modern tourist crap and authentically restored medieval buildings. I highly recommend visiting.
Eventually, Charlotte and I decide we’ve seen enough of the area and head back into the “New City” (an area so new, it was old before the European discovery of America). We do a bit of shopping and Charlotte finds a dress for the upcoming wedding, which makes her very happy. We celebrate in the traditional French way: by stopping at a cafe and having espressos. While there, we come up with a plan to bring a US-style coffee lounge to France, coupled with a bar. That way we could offer three things that are very hard to find in France, all in one place: a lounge-y, bring your laptop or a book atmosphere; American-sized coffees (in addition to traditional French offerings); and modern artisan cocktails. All we need is a couple hundred thousand bucks to get it off the ground! Any takers?
Once done daydreaming, we head back to the hotel for some internet and studying time. Dinnertime soon rolls around, and we go back into new city to visit an Italian restaurant that’s gotten good reviews on the web. Charlotte gets prawns and I get a kind of flat calzone thing filled with sausage, cheese, bechamel sauce, mushrooms, and a fried egg over-easy. It is ridiculously delicious. We split a bottle of wine, but decide to be good and skip dessert. We head back out into the new city, and promptly get completely lost, ending up at the furthest corner away from where our hotel is. Awesome! So after a sheepish huddle around the map, we begin the walk back, finally finding our place of lodging and crashing out for the night.
Wednesday – May 12th – Carcassonne to Toulouse
We wake up around ten-ish, as seems to be the pattern, and go downstairs to enjoy the free breakfast. There we meet two British guys who currently live in Amsterdam and are road-tripping through France. We chat with them and the lady who runs the hotel for a bit, then head back upstairs, shower, get out stuff together and check out. We jump in the car and bid the city of Carcassonne “au revoir” as we head for Toulouse. Our next stop is less than 100 KM away, but it will take us several hours to get there because on the way we stop at a mall and begin the great shoe hunt of 2010. Charlotte has her wedding outfit, now, except for the shoes, and she’s having a hard time finding a pair she likes that don’t cost a zillion dollars.
We try pretty much every store in the mall that sells shoes, even stores that are 90% clothing and just have a token shoe selection, without a ton of luck. Finally we manage to hunt down an elusive shoe store called “Andre” (the mall directory is somewhat confusing because some of the stores have outdoor entrances and some don’t). Here we find not one, but four pairs of shoes Charlotte actually likes. After modeling them all for me (my conclusion: “I don’t get women’s’ shoes. They all look uncomfortable as hell.”), she selects a pair, and we breathe a collective sigh of relief: all of the shopping for the wedding is now done!
Shoes successfully acquired, Charlotte and I decide to grab lunch. We settle on a restaurant called Les Trois Gats (the three cats), which is — somewhat amusingly — a Barcelona-style tapas joint. We’re not feeling like tapas though, and instead get salads. Mine has eggs and ham, Charlotte’s has smoked fish. Both are quite tasty. I also have a beer, and life seems pretty good. We hop back into the car, and continue on to Toulouse. We have no plans and no hotel, but we’ll sure things will work out.
Toulouse is surrounded by a circular highway that makes getting in and out of it relatively easy, if you know where you’re going. We don’t … and end up taking a lengthy but rather bucolic tour through some French suburbs before getting back into the city proper. This time we do the smart thing, park the car, and hit a news stand to find a map. We then take this map to a small internet cafe, and find a hotel that’s close to us and within our price range. We manage to make to confusing drive from the cafe to the hotel without running over any pedestrians, and pull into their underground parking garage. Upstairs, the clerk confirms that they have rooms available, and we book one, heading upstairs to relax for a bit.
It’s cold and grey out, and beginning to rain, and I’m not feeling hungry, so we decide Charlotte will just grab dinner from the nearest available source — a Thai restaurant just down the street — and we’ll hang out in the hotel bar. Charlotte has a glass of vermouth on ice, and I have a small glass of Armagnac. This proves to be a mistake, as the Armagnac sets off what seems to be be either a mild bout of food poisoning, or a small case of the flu. Either way, by the time we head back up to the room, I’m feeling nauseous and my whole body aches. Awesome! Charlotte falls asleep while I sit around reading ESPN.com and hoping to feel better. Eventually I also manage to sleep. Not our best day in France, unfortunately.
[Sorry, No Pictures from Today]
