Another tussle with the French rail system and our luggage brought us into the legendary city of Carcassonne with its fortified hilltop citadel. A UNESCO World Heritage listed site, Carcassonne has been part of my inner landscape since my earliest university days in the School of Architecture. The town of Carcassone is very "French", somewhat shabby and grimy. The citadel is rather the worse for becoming the victim of rampant tourism. Still it is an impressive pile and the last rays of the sun lighting up the massive stone ramparts is a sight worth waiting half a lifetime for.
Crossing the splendid Pont Vieux, we passed men hanging around with their dogs begging that seem to be a normal part of the tourist cityscape wherever we went in France. Not sure whether the dogs are meant to be threatening or to garner sympathy - perhaps both. The good news is the dogs seemed to be well fed and loved – at least in public.
One of the best things for me given that Richard was still spending most of his time in or near bed was the walkway along the river Aude below the citadel. Walking this path and the city streets complemented the excellent walking workout we got climbing the hill to the citadel.
It was quite late in the afternoon by the time we checked into our hotel with a panoramic view of the citadel from our miniscule balcony. We had a good walk around the ramparts with splendid views of the surrounding countryside and along the narrow winding streets within the walls, mostly now lined with small shops selling lavender goodies and a lot of tat, bars and eateries. But all too soon the chilling air and the onset of dusk sent us scurrying back down the hill to our hotel and we never did return to explore the insides of the buildings within the citadel.
We did the tourist thing and dined at the top of the hotel with the floodlit citadel as the centre-piece of our dinner. Food was pretty good for hotel fare - as one would expect in France - and the very young waiters utterly attentive, appropriately enthusiastic and clearly graduates of an excellent school of tourism.
I feel sad that we really did not do justice to this splendid mediaeval monument and that we came away feeling it was more akin to a historic theme park than a place in which to reflect on the long history of toil and strife that is the fabric of those towering walls and yards. But there will always be a memory of engineering excellence and massive human effort which was the main takeaway from this short visit. This experience has also convinced me that we must avoid one-night stands – they are quite unsatisfactory. Yes, we saw Carcassonne but we did not truly experience it - 'nuff said.
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