Second stop on our fall break: Off to Carcassonne! Carcassonne is a medieval, walled-in, fortified city that was touched up in the 19th century and preserved for all to see and enjoy. It’s basically the closest thing to fairy-tale-castle-land that you can find. The interior of the cité has lots of tourist shops and restaurants. It is really beautiful, especially the view of the cité from the outside at night. Carcassonne really has two separate halves; the fortified cité and the area outside where the town built up around it.
We had a crummy hotel experience here, but I guess that’s what we get for booking cheaply at a hotel near the train station in town. Hotel Bristol has an old glory to it from the outside, but inside the hotel has definitely seen its better days. Everything eventually worked out, so now it’s just a humorous anecdote. This was the only part of our vacation when we actually stayed at a hotel; for the rest of our stops we used Airbnb and one traditional B&B and had very good experiences.
Carcassonne is absolutely a neat place to visit for the historical sites, but we found the people of the city to be a bit less friendly than other southern towns we’ve visited. They seem a bit soured by the tourist economy which presumably dominates livelihoods there. Two days was enough time for us to spend here.
Life-Pause in Toulouse 