Trips

Sat., 6/4/22 - Albi and Carcassonne

Today's drive, another 7-hour tip, took us from Sarlat to Carcassonne with a 2-3-hour stop in Albi. The Albi information is covered with the Insight part of this presentation (use your "BACK" button to return here).

The new bus was an improvement - it has 33 seats so we each can have two seats. This is a luxury even though there is still no leg room. Our knees push into the seat in front of us, there is no foot rest, no plugins, and nowhere for a water bottle. Still a far cry from the "49-seat coach" promised in the OAT pretrip materials.

The first break of the day was supposed to be at a gas station on the toll road - for 20 minutes and with lots of toilets and snacks. Instead we stopped in a village at a coffee shop with one toilet. Celia (OAT) bought coffee and chocolate-covered graham cracker cookies. We were there almost an hour.

Albi was our lunch stop - 2-3 hours.

Finally arrived in Carcassonne and checked into our hotel: The Tribe Hotel. It is described as a “new concept” hotel. No luggage racks, no drawers, no shelves. There are beds, thankfully. These have space underneath to roll in your suitcase. This makes the bed rather high off the floor and you have to constantly bend over, or get down on your hands and knees, to access your suitcase. The place must have been chosen by one of the 20-somethings in the Paris office. We have one chair and look out at a lovely gravel roof.

Dinner was beer and pizza at a place six of us finally found about a mile from the hotel - it was Sunday so there weren't many choices.

 

Sun., 6/5/22 - Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a wonderful old Medieval walled city. We were fortunate to visit it twice on this trip to France.

Celia led us on a tour of the Cite de Carcassonne - a local guide would have been nice. We entered by the back route and ended at the drawbridge (main tourist entry) where we entered with the Insight tour. The walk up to the castle was difficult. The cathedral was closed for mass at 11 - so glad we saw the inside last time. The castle was absolutely crowded.

Cite de Carcassonne
"Back" entry to the Cite de Carcassonne	Walls and ramparts
Walls and ramparts	Altogether a steep climb up to the entry
Tower	Arrow slits in the tower
Wall and moat	Never seen Mallard ducks up so high!
Approaching the back gate	Main tourist entrance
Bust of Lady Carcas Carcassonne is named after Lady Carcas who, according to the legend, saved the city (castle) from siege by feeding all the remaining grain to a pig and then she threw it over the wall at the attackers. The legend says that the pig split open and the grain spilled out so the attackers thought if the besieged had enough food to fatten a pig, they could survive a long time inside the castle, so they left.	Moat and access bridge
Entrance to the Castle at the site (we didn't go in)	Inside the Castle compound
Inside the Castle compound
Basilica of Saints Nazaire and Celse	Tower detail
Lots of Gargoyles	Drawings of Gargoyles
Gargoyle	Gargoyle
Stained glass window - from the outside	Same window from the inside looking out
Church exterior	Rose window
A second Rose window	Organ
Well	Steeple
Sign for the school	Game on the pavement in the schoolyard
Different dream catcher	Nice sign
Sundial	Cobblestone street
Manhole cover	Wall murals along the route to the Cite de Carcassonne
Bridge from hotel to the Cite de Carcassonne	Nice roof
Before dinner we walked along the Aude river where we saw a Nutria, men playing pétanque, a playground with kids and their nannies, and rapids with people cooling their feet in the water. Since this is another bank holiday weekend, there are many people - French and tourists - out walking around.
Probably a nutria	Aude River
Very large horseback riding group	Had to wait to cross the street to get to the hotel
Mon., 6/6/22 - Carcassonne and the Auzias Winery The OAT “Day in a Life” for this French Impressions trip was to a winery, Auzias. The winery was destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1800s. Vines were planted in the 1830s and wine was produced by 1872. There are now 115 acres of grapes of two varieties. They make four kinds of blended red wines by changing the percentage of grape combinations in the blended wines. After walking to the vines and then to the vats and barrels and learning about maturation and aging, we looked at the machine that cleans the bottle, fills it, adds sulfate, corks it, caps it, labels it, and then a person puts it in a box to age some more in the glass bottle. The activity for the day was first wine tasting and then experimenting with combining different amounts of each of four wines to produce a unique (to each person) "blended" wine. Lunch followed.
Auzias' products	Coat of arms of the winery
Grape vines	Grape vine
Aging the wine	Bottling machine
Ready to mix	Ready to taste

Continue on next page