Carcassonne

The next day we took the train to Carcassonne.  This was a place I was really looking forward to...everyone who had been there had said it was beautiful.

We arrived late afternoon and asked directions at the station to the tourist office and the woman there booked us a room at Hotel Central, ten minutes walk up the road.

The man who ran the hotel was nice, helpful with all my questions, etc, but unfortunately his pleasant manner in no way made up for the bed, which had definitely seen years and years of better days.  It was the most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept on and had springs that dug uncomfortably into me all night long.

I woke up feeling full of flu the next morning, although some of the aches and pains could have been attributed to the bed.  I found a pharmacy and bought some cough medicine, as we were both barking like dogs.

It was a lovely sunny day so I thought a cruise on the Canal du Midi would be quite a relaxing and pleasant way to see the scenery.  When we went to book we discovered the booking place also hired out bicycles.  Miss S was very keen to do that instead, so we did.  The minimum booking time was two hours.  It was really enjoyable and a lot of fun, cycling along the tow path, alongside the canal.  We watched a boat go through the lock which was interesting.

The next day we left our bags in reception and walked twenty minutes up the road to the walled Medieval City.  We wandered around the cobble-stoned lanes of shops and restaurants and went inside the castle.  Needless to say, we took a lot of photos.  We had lunch and then headed back to the
hotel to collect our bags and went to the train station to catch our train to Barcelona, Spain.