Carcasonne

Day 25 Sunday 21/5/17  We were about a 10 minute stroll to the medieval Cite....

..and immediately visited the Office de Tourisme where we bought two Carcasonne Citi Passes and booked in for the 1:30PM English language tour of the old city. Our first visit was to the castle - it is an interesting place with evidence of different construction periods going back to the Romans

This also gave us access to the ramparts of the inner city wall ( Carcasonne has two concentric defensive walls ) so we walked half of these before our tour.

Looking across to the modern city of Carcasonne

Our walking tour guide was Jacqueline, a fantastic character who had been a French teacher in Sheffield for 15 years back in the late 70’s and 80’s. I am sure that we would have enjoyed the tour with any guide given the amount and quality of information provided but the sheer exuberance displayed by Jacqueline made it an absolute joy. The tour took about 1.5 hours and took us between the defensive walls, round the castle and to the church.

Jacqueline giving a sterling performance! 

After the tour we enjoyed lunch at the castle and walked the eastern ramparts.

The Roman section of the wall

The Cite is a medieval fortress restored by a 19th century architect from 1853 onwards. Because it has parts dating back to Roman times it was a jigsaw of restoration and what stands now is not necessarily all strictly authentic but is agreed now to be a work of genius (they say! ). Walt Disney visits the city after the Second World War and used concepts and images from it as he designed Cinderella’s castle in DisneyWorld. It certainly had a Disney feel. Art imitating Life imitating Art? 

After a beer, a quick rest and freshen up we walked over the old bridge to the Bastide, the low town of Carcasonne. We didn’t were anything particularly inviting so we came back across the bridge....

..and walked up to the medieval city entering by the Porte d’Aude ( the river gate since the river is the Aude ).

We had dinner at the Dame de Carcas restaurant, another menus formula and again good value and quality. On the walk back to the hotel we took the opportunity to capture som images of the floodlit city, it is spectacular.