Last week, while having a beer at a pub called “The Four Monkeys”, we decided we wanted to do a citytrip during the weekend. We quickly decided on Carcassonnne, it only takes an hour to get there so it was perfect to do in a day. The same night I booked the tickets for the train.
On Saturday morning we met up at the train station to catch our train to Carcassonne, after spending an hour on the train we arrived in Carcassonne. Luckily for us the weather was perfect. A lot of sunshine and an almost complete blue sky, with the weather on our side we started walking around in Carcassonne. On Saturday there’s a market in the main square, which was really nice. We got to try a bunch of local products.
After spending some time at the market, it was time for us to go and discover the citadel. We got a beautiful view of the Cité and Le Pont Vieux when we accidently took a wrong turn and ended on the wrong bridge. So we turned back and took Le Pont Vieux.
It was really impressive to see the Cité from closeby. Just try to imagine the labour it would have taken to build a place like this and especially in a time when machinery was not yet invented.
As soon as we entered the Cité we wanted to visit the castle inside of the citadel. But we first stopped to buy some postcards to send home. After getting the postcards we walked toward the Château, too bad there was this huge line at the entrance so we settled on visiting the rest of the Cité first. While walking around we found a little restaurant where they had a lunch for €11, which is pretty cheap for France, so we had lunch there. It was so nice, we sat on the terrace enjoying the beautiful weather. The only “negative” thing was the service. It took us three hours to have lunch but it was so nice just to chill inside the walls of the Citadel while enjoying the sun and eachothers company.
After dinner we went to visit the Château, in France a lot of museums are free for European youth under the age of 26. To bad one of my Erasmus friends is 28 so he had to pay for his ticket while the rest of us got to enter for free. Because our lunch ran a bit late, we only had 45 minutes to visit the Château.
Because we didn’t have a lot of time to visit the Château, we almost ran thru the museum so we could see the walls and the “Grand Théâtre de la Cité”. This amphitheater still gets used today. There’s room for almost 3000 people. The walls were just as impressive as the rest of the fortress. After doing the tour of the fortress we decided it was time to head back towards the trainstation. On our way out we got to see the remainders from a contemporary art installation from 2018 made by a Swiss artist Felice Varini.
Apparently the locals where less than amused with the artwork. Because now it’s subtle but back when it was first shown to the public the stripes were a bright yellow color. There was even a petition to remove the art project.
After an exhausting day visiting the Cité. We relaxed a little more on the island in the river Aude. It was so wonderful to see the sun set on the fortress.
By the time it got dark we were on our way to the trainstation in order to take the train back to Toulouse. As soon as we got on the train it became clear that everyone had a lovely day but we were all a bit tired but because it’s still a Saturday we decided to grab a beer once we got back to Toulouse. After the beer everyone went home, it was a nice end to a beautiful day.