Spring is here

Although it felt more like summer today. I hope it doesn't get too much hotter. We don't have any A/C.

Anyway, last weekend (April 13th) we took yet another trip. We bought a Eurail pass back in September, and it will expire this week, so we just had to use it up. This time we went to Carcassonne, Toulouse and Lourdes. These are all cities in the South of France, in the Occitane region, where the language variations are more like Spanish. It is called Occitane because the word for 'yes' was 'oc' instead of 'oui' down there. This was all before Paris imposed modern French on all of France, or something like that.

Carcassonne is best known for its medieval castle. This castle is really a double-walled medieval city, with a castle in the inner wall. Within the outer wall are a bunch of tourist traps. I think we dropped about $6 on 3 caramels at one of those candy shops. They were good, though. The free olive shapped chocolates more than made up for it. They had shops that sold swords and medieval weapons of minimal destruction. There were other shops that had Provencal pottery, and shops that had regional fabric. We ate at one of the many restaurants serving the regional favorite dish called 'Cassoulet', which is basically navy beans, sausage and a leg of duck. It was actually a really good meal. Rustic French food is really the best thing ever.

We took a tour of the castle. We got to visit a lot of the towers along the inner wall. All of the towers were constructed with different architecture. Near the end of the tour we could see the gardens of a really nice hotel inside the outer wall called Hotel la Ville or something. It costed about $500 a night. Kevin Costner supposedly stayed there while filming part of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.




Next stop, Toulouse - the 5th largest city in France. It is called 'The Pink City' because most everything was built with brick (which is really more of a redish-brownish-orange). That is unusual for France, in my limited experience. It was one of the nicer cities I've seen, mostly because of the clean, dog-poopless sidewalks. There were a bunch of Romanesque cathedrals there. Most of the cathedrals in northern France are of the Gothic style. That was pretty much it.



On Sunday, we headed to Lourdes. If you don't know anything about Lourdes, just think of Myrtle Beach, or Gatlinburg, with a bunch of shops selling Virgin Mary shaped water bottles. The story behind that place is that about 130 years ago a girl named Bernadette claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary appear to her in a grotto (a little cave in the side of a hill where water flows out of). A magnificent cathedral was built on the hill over the grotto. The cathedral is relatively new, and basically is the most glorious one in France today. And there is also an underground basillica that seats probably 20 thousand people. Lourdes is a very popular place for Catholics to take a pilgrimage. And, as I've said earlier, the tourism industry reigns supreme in that town. It has the second largest number of hotels of any city in France.

Then we got back on the train for another 6 or 7 hours and ended up back in Angers. Along the way we went through the Aquitane region. It reminded me a lot of eastern NC because there was nothing but flat expanses of sandy farmland and pine trees as far as the eye could see. As we made our way north the landscape became more rolly. This time of year there are many fields planted with oil seed rape, supposedly a major source of Canola oil. These small plants have a bright yellow flower, so if you can imagine the endless fields of bright yellow you can get a glimpse of what it was like. Very picturesque!