17 - Pawn Takes Rook, King me! - Carcassonne
Saturday, December 09, 2023 - Carcassonne
I set out in a different direction for this weekend: East! Having heard of the boardgame while in the US, the city of Carcassonne was on my list of possible places to visit here in France. A quick check on Google maps showed it to be a roughly 4 hour drive from Dax, passing through Toulouse. The drive took me onto one of the major highways and it runs roughly parallel with the Pyrenées, sadly there were too many clouds to make out any more than just the base of the mountains but it was still a pleasant drive. There was a sign on the road at one point that said I was entering Cathare land; I'll have to do a little more reading about them but my understanding is that the Catholic church doesn't suffer heretics and thus the Cathares needed some strong castles.
While discussing my weekend plans this week at work, one of the engineers from AIGP (I'll call him Mojito) told me that he was going to be visiting on Saturday with friends and invited me to join them in exploring the city. It was really nice of him to offer for me to tag along and I was more than happy to join them for lunch and touring. It was interesting getting to chat with other people and I think I was able to follow most of the conversation even if I didn't have much to say unless someone asked me directly. I did mis-construe a question about when I return to the US as when will I go back for the holidays but, overall, not to shabby.
At the restaurant, I dined on cassoulet: beans, meat, and fat all served in a piping hot ceramic bowl. It was délicieux!
One of the people in our group grew up near Carcassonne and has a history professor mother, so he acted as our tour guide in the afternoon. Carcassonne has a modern city and the medieval city: the medeival city is a well preserved fortress. The place is open 24hrs and has lots of shops, restaurants, and even hotels that blend into the city layout and make traversing the cobblestone streets interesting. We didn't enter the chateau proper of the city as visiting it would have required waiting in a long line and he said it usually takes 2 hours to explore.
The place was packed with Spanish people, apparently there was a holiday down there. I was surprised at how packed the whole city was but I suppose with a medieval festival going on, it was the perfect outing for families with young children and grown men. There was even a wedding that was finishing up at the basilica! Nothing quite like getting into the "just married car" while hundreds of people mill about and the scent of melting raclette cheese lingers heavily in the air!
I bade Mojito and his friends good bye in the evening as they were returning to Toulouse (there was a chance of seeing them there when I swing by enroute home tomorrow). One of the Christmas holiday festivities at Carcassonne included a torch march (marche au flambeaux) from the castle to the main (modern) town square; I joined the parade for a bit but didn't cross the pedestrian bridge because I'd have to walk all the way back for my car. Instead, I broke off and worked my way back to the castle to see how the loss of daylight affected the experience.
The medieval city is much less crowded at night and the lights pointed at the exterior walls make the place look even more impressive. Once inside, there really wasn't that much lighting but I discovered that guided night tours gave those tourists small LED lanterns. After a brief pause, many restaurants and cafés reopened to serve dinner and one of the main squares was bustling with dinners.
When I left the medieval city, I was exhausted. After checking into the hotel near the Carcassonne airport, I had hardly energy for anything aside from hitting the hay.
Sunday, December 10, 2023 - Carcassonne
In the morning, I made my way back for Round 2 with the walled city. This time, I arrived at 9:30 and headed straight to the chateau so I could tour it and the city walls. If you go to the castle separately from a guided tour of the city, then you have the option of using a self-guided audio tour device; however, the person in charge of distributing those hadn't yet arrived so I went without it - trusting in my ability to read the placards to fill in most of the gaps for me.
The castle has a museum about the city's conservation and then what life was like in the medieval era in general as well as a few specifics about Carcassonne's history. The legend goes that Dame Carcas (of the Saracenes) eventually surrendered the city to a siege by Charlemagne by sounded the bells: "Sir, Carcas sonne!" I don't know if I buy it and haven't looked up the history but I suppose legends have their place.
It was a beautiful morning and I could glimpse the Pyrenées to the South from the castle towers and the Black Mountains to the North with all their modern wind farms. A walk amongst the castle's hoarding was interesting and I had to fight back the urge to drop stones and boiling oil upon the visitors down below.
The museum ends at the giftshop!
The city started with a Gallo-Roman curtain wall, which means that many of the towers have a horse-shoe shape and used to have relatively flat roofs; later, the Visigoths added the iconic conical roofs to the towers and eventually added an outer wall to further beef up the place. The chateau was built into the curtain wall but added a moat and staging area to protect from threats that made it into the city.
A few of the curtain wall towers were reverted to the older design to better demonstrate the difference during the restoration.
My walk along the ramparts brought me right back to the Narbonnaise gate and the medieval festival. From the ramparts I had spotted a couple tents that looked like fun; and lo and behold but the axe throwing was free! While waiting in line, there was a couple volleys of candy launched from a tiny mangonel for the kids to scramble to collect.
With my axe throwing complete and a crepe cooked over a wood fire in my belly, I bade adieu to Carcassonne and began the long trip back towards the Atlantic.
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