Carcassonne

Wednesday 17 December

Finally had to leave Avignon - it was hard to say goodbye, especially as we had a particularly comfortable apartment however Steve (and the rest of us experiencing the tension of the driver) were more than happy to say farewell to the nightmare of the rabbit-warren of the extremely narrow one-way street system. Heading toward Toulouse we stopped at Carcassone - a medieval town halfway between Avignon & Toulouse. The first sight of this fairytale city was quite amazing - almost like a Disney version of a medieval town, except that this was real. Weather was still overcast, bitterly cold & trying hard not to drizzle. In summer Carcassone is a major tourist destination, however December weather (and possibly common sense?) contributed to hardly any other visitors. Fortunately, many of the tacky souvenir shops also were luckily closed. The old fortress, cathedral & a wander through the streets completed our cold visit.

Managed to arrive in Toulouse about 3pm. Our lodgings were once again in prime position in the midst of the old town - once again on a pedestrian walkway adjacent to the Christmas markets. Naturally, in line with our previous experiences, the entire area was crawling with thousands of people, all wandering willy-nilly over roads & between cars etc - the fact that a car was moving seemed to have little impact on their progress. We inched (literally) our way through to the nearby car park (entrance located slap bang in the middle of the Christmas markets) only to discover that we had missed the turn off by 10 metres. At this stage, atmosphere in the car was extremely quiet & quite tense. There was fear that Steve would cry when we discovered that Tommy was correct in stating "you have reached your destination" - unfortunately we hadn't listened. Our guardian angels were obviously looking after us as the gendarmes took pity on us, held up the rest of the traffic & organised our reversal up the road to the entrance of the car park. Our eventual arrival & depositing of our luggage at our apartment was a huge relief to all.

The apartment at Toulouse was in a great location, however immediate impressions included "extremely compact", "space efficient", "small", and (from Bronwen) "potentially illegal dwelling", however we were very cosy & although quite spartan in kitchen, bedroom & bathroom accessories, the huge tv, dvd & audio system with large selection of DVD's let us to believe that perhaps the apartment had been appointed by a young male???

With the weather still very cold & rain drizzling we wandered around before finding a creperie across the road for a warm meal.