Blogging in the Alley at Carcassone

We arrived in Carcassonne in the Languedoc region of Southern France on Friday night. We were staying inside the walls of the medieval fortified city, known now as La Cite. We found our B & B, Chambres L' Echappee Belle, got settled, and took Rick's advice to do a night walk.







When I woke up on Saturday morning, I grabbed the camera and snapped this photo.


Our B & B was lovely.






Our host, Joanna, was efficient. Check out was 10:00 a.m. and promptly at 9:50 Joanna asked if I was finished on the computer. We politely gathered our things and moved to the alley in front of the B & B. So while sitting on the ground, I finished one blog post and got started on another before my laptop battery gave out. And that's why there are photos of me sitting on the ground blogging in an alley.



A little ramble through the old cite. Definitely a tourist trap, but worth the brief visit.











I found a cemetary right outside the cite walls and just had to go in . . .






We left early on Saturday afternoon for Collioure on the Mediterranean Sea. We definitely need a vacation from our vacation!

Row Row Row Your Boat . . .

Friday we spent our second and final day in the Dordogne region, canoeing down the Dordogne River from Vitrac Port to Beynac (a lesisurely nine-mile paddle, but let me tell you, having just gone on the recent Portland Art Collective Pirate Paddle, I was viewed as an experienced and fearsome paddler on the mighty Dordogne!). However, because it is us travelling in France, you know there has to be a back story. Here it is: Howard read through Rick Steves' section on canoeing the river and based on that information, or should I say his interpretation of it, he programed Jill (our GPS guide) for our intended destination. Well, to make a long story (and drive) short, it was the wrong site -- what we needed was only 8 kilometers away and we had driven 35 kilometers! So here are a couple of photos of our unintended drive through the country (we don't even know where we ended up).



On an interesting note, when we arrived at the wrong canoe site, where there was beautiful river scenery, but no villages, the guy told us that all of the other canoe rentals along the river were closed for the season! We left, willing to take our chances that he was not telling the truth. Is lying a French cultural thing that no one warned us about??

Here are photos of our drive back to where we intended to go in the first place, Vitrac Port.




Back to our day. We found Vitrac Port, rented a canoe (all of the canoe rental companies were open for business), and joined the dozens of canoers on the Dordogne River (but first, I got stung by nettles as I was taking care of business in the bushes). The sun was out, making it warm and sunny, a perfect day for a paddle on the river. We saw campers, fishermen, a nude bather, swimmers, and castles along the way. We stopped for lunch at La Roque-Gageac (beaching our canoe on the shore along with the others), and then continued on down the river to Beynac, where we got a ride back to our car in Vitrac Port.




















From Vitrac Port, we headed south for our three-hour drive to Carcassonne, in the Languedoc region.