Visiting a Castle - A Day in Carcassone

This morning we all slept in a little bit, except David, of course.  He was up early so he could get over to the local branch of our bank to complain because we were having trouble with our credit card.  We finally all got moving a bit before 10 and headed over to the tourist office to see about a tour.  Unfortunately, the tour we were going to take is only once a day, starting at 10, so we'd missed it.  So, we took the bus up to La Cite, the magnificent castle/fortress up on a hill for which Carcassonne is famous.  As we arrived at La Cite, we saw a sign for an informational train ride.  We decided to take it.  The train took us around the outside of the Castle and we learned the history of the place.

Sculpture of Dame Carcas, for whom the city is named

After the train tour, we walked in.  It's actually a very small medieval city, except it's mostly filled with souvenir stands and restaurants.  As we walked further around, we found that there were also hotels and some private homes there as well.  We walked around for a while then stopped for lunch at a lovely restaurant, within La Cite.

Lunch!

After lunch, Barbara mentioned that she wanted to see this church, so we wandered over there.  The church was located within the fortress as well. Inside, the church had magnificent stained glass windows.  As we were getting ready to leave, suddenly, there was beautiful music.  I thought someone had put on a CD, and David thought there was a huge choir.  It turned out to be three guys with beautiful voices and great acoustics!

David said this reminded him of me.  I disagree!

We left the church and then walked back through the city to our boat.  We stopped at a few stores to shop.  The entire marina is filled with boats and many people are sitting on top drinking, eating, chatting and relaxing.  I went downstairs to wash out some clothes and suddenly I almost got knocked off my feet.  We'd been hit by another boat!  I went up to look around and there was this bunch of people on this giant rental boat, and the captain didn't know what he was doing!  Everyone was yelling at him and trying to tell him what to do.  When he finally got the boat into the slip, everyone started clapping and honking boat horns.  We decided to just sit and relax till dinner.

After dinner, we went to see La Cite at night all lit up.  It was impossible to take a good picture but I got some video.