Return to Carcassonne

Ten years ago, Karen and I spent a week in Carcassonne, which is 90 minutes north and west of Montpellier. We stayed with friends Brian and Andrea McCann in an apartment overlooking the city's main square.

I remember sitting in that square, sipping wine and reading in a French newspaper about a terminal building at Charles de Gaulle airport that had collapsed that morning, the day, or so we thought, that friends were flying out from CDG. I also remember lying awake at night, listening to the racket from a nightclub on the street behind our apartment, and hearing what sounded like the cries of someone being seriously assaulted.

Ah, those were the days!

La Cité de Carcassonne

We naturally spent a fair amount of time while there the first time at La Cité de Carcassonne, the reconstructed medieval walled town on the heights overlooking the Aude River and the new city. It's a tremendous place, with three kilometres of double walls and 52 towers. The cite, originally settled and developed by the Romans, has over 2,500 years of history, but most of what is there today dates from the high Middle Ages. At one point, during the 100 Years War, it was burned by Richard Lionheart. Today, La Cité is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We thought it would appeal to our history-nut daughter, so on Tuesday, that was our destination.

La Cité de Carcassonne

The drive down was easy on the autoroute, but ended up costing us another €30 in highway tolls (there and back). Ouch. It was a lovely day in Montpellier - sunny, high of 14C - but cooler in Carcassonne which is on higher ground. La Cité was easy to get to from the highway, and the site still looks amazing from the outside, at least from a little distance. We ate a picnic lunch in the car in the parking lot - the new austerity - and then sallied in.

La Cité de Carcassonne

By the mid-19th century, the old citadel had been abandoned for many years and was mouldering away, not least because local builders were cannibalizing its stonework. The government originally proposed demolishing it. The locals protested, and Paris relented, hiring architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to head up a restoration project. (He also worked on the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris.) It took decades, and wasn't complete until the late 1800s. The place has been a touristic cash cow ever since.

La Cité de Carcassonne

There is some controversy about the integrity of the restoration - there was even at the time - with critics charging that Viollet-le-Duc and his collaborators turned the place into a kind of Dark Ages Disneyland. They have a point. It does look a little phony, with its perfectly conical-roofed towers and concrete-buttressed half-timber houses. And today it's mainly a place to go shopping for tourist knick-knacks. It's depressingly commercial. There is a museum display, but as I remember - we didn't go in this time - it mainly tells the story of the reconstruction project and the men involved in it.

La Cité de Carcassonne

We loved La Cité when we were here ten years ago. This time? Not so much. Caitlin says she enjoyed it. I hope so. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, poking our heads into shops, and walked down to the bridge across the river to the new city, the route we had most often come ten years ago. I was left wondering if it was worth the long drive and the costs involved.

La Cité de Carcassonne

The best thing I saw all day? A glimpse through the window of a closed art gallery in Bastide, the section of Carcassonne between La Cité and the river, of some paintings by a Cuban artist, Gustavo Díaz Sosa. Very cool.

Gustavo Díaz Sosa, from the series Huérfanos de Babel

The next two days would be down days for poor Caitlin, who, as it turns out, is not fully in vacation mode. She has another job interview, by Skype this time, today (Thursday). On Wednesday, she had to wait around for the people who will be interviewing her (from Gainsborough's House in Sudbury) to test out their Skype connection. And she has been preparing obsessively, reading and making notes.

Montpellier, Ecusson, Cathedral

Karen and I went out for a long walk in the late morning, wandering for almost two hours in the Ecusson, the medieval town with its maze of narrow streets. It's too bad we're not shoppers because the shopping here is fantastic. We were particularly taken by one toy store with fantastic stuff in the window, including beautifully made marionnettes - and hardly any conventional modern toys. I'll have to remember to take some pictures of the shop's window displays.

Montpellier, Jardin des Plantes

After lunch, when Caitlin had finished her test run of the Skype set-up, we went out walking again with her, up past the Place Royal du Peyrou to the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical garden which is open at no charge, at least at this time of year. There wasn't a lot to see, the place looks kind of desolate right now. But there was an impressive bamboo forest, and a greenhouse with very nice-looking displays of desert plants, closed when we were there.

Montpellier, Beaux Arts District

We were lamenting later with Shelley Boyes (by Skype) about all the closures. This is one of the problems with coming to a summer place in the winter. Outside the major cities, and especially in the places that are mainly tourist draws, things close down for the winter or have limited opening hours. Shelley, who is squiring her sisters around Provence this week, has run into the same thing. It wasn't such a problem in Valencia which has more appeal as a winter destination and is a big enough city that tourism isn't the main reason it has things to see and do - or Montpellier, to be fair.

Later today when Caitlin has finished her interview, we'll drive down to the beach to check that out. And then tomorrow, we're driving to Aix en Provence to visit Shelley, via Arles for some sightseeing - of whatever might be open.