Showing posts with label castles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label castles. Show all posts

Sunday, July 18, 2010

carcassonne-not the board game

On Saturday, Noemi, Pierre, Laura, and I took a train to Carcassonne, a little medieval village about 45 minutes away from Toulouse.

So. freaking. cool.


When I come back to France, I am adding this place to the itinerary. It's a huge fortress (I think the largest one in Europe? According to Pierre?) with a million little shops and restaurants and houses inside the castle walls. It was so picturesque. We ran into a singing group from the University of Grenada (like 1.5 hours away from Noemi's hometown), so Noemi ran over and talked to them, and we took our picture with them. Then, a bunch of girls having a bachelorette party came over and started dancing to their singing. And then pretty soon everyone in the vicinity was either dancing around and singing traditional Spanish songs, or watching, highly entertained. It was hilarious. We had a delightful little picnic dinner just outside the walls, near the lower city. Baguettes, nutella, mousse du canard, Spanish tortillas, chorizo, some sort of sausage that I can't remember the name of, and chips were the menu. Yum! (Seriously, how will I eat when I get home? Too bad cheese won't last a 14 hour plane ride.)






Thursday, July 1, 2010

3 castles in 14 hours




getting really lazy with the pictures here.
My mom and I took a bus tour down to the Loire Valley where we saw Amboise (bottom 3 photos), Chenonceau (middle photo), and Chambord (top). Amboise is where Leonardo DaVinci is buried. It's an adorable little town. We ate lunch at a cafe, sitting facing the street French style to enjoy the people watching. Chambord has this awesome double staircase where if you go up one side of it, you'll be able to see your friend going up the other periodically in little windows, but you'll never meet until you get to the top or bottom. It was a fun little adventure.