On the way to Carcassonne, we stopped by Notre Dame du Cros, a small church in the mountains outside Caunes. There are trails built around the church that have the stations of the cross along them. We noticed vans from a nearby university and school in the parking lot and walked behind the church and saw that there were students climbing the rock face of the mountain.
Caroline and Dave walked up on one of the trails where the stations of the cross were.
The inside of the church was decorated in the same red and white marble from the local quarries.
We arrived at Carcassonne amid a crowd of tourists. The wonderful walled city continues to entrance all who see it even though it has not been authentically restored.
Legend tells us that Madam Carcass saved the city from a siege of Charlemagne's army., and therefore, the city is named after her.
There is a castle inside the walls.
Leon and I walked around the city and found the B&B where we stayed back in 1999 on our first visit to Carcassonne with Jason and Caroline.
One of our favorite memories of Carcassonne is the church. The last time we were here, there was a wonderful French choir performing American gospel spirituals. We mentioned this to our landlord, and he said that the French have a real fascination with American music of this type. As it turned out, there was a wonderful acapella men's quartet performing this time when we walked in the church. The acoustics inside the church are perfect, so the sound of a musical group just resounds throughout the building. There are beautiful stained glass windows in the church.
After we left Carcassonne, we headed toward the Pyrenees to drive one leg of the Tour de France coming up in July. We drove through several small villages and took photos of scenery along the way.
The Pyrenees are steep and rocky. We tried to imagine the bikers racing down these roads and going through these picturesque villages. We decided to drive through the St. Georges Gorge, a narrow gorge that is cut by a river through the mountains. It was kind of scary to drive along with rocky outcrops and overhangs and a tunnel cut through the rock.
Just an aside that we noticed while we have been here this week. Buses like this are used to transport children to and from school. We did not know if they are public buses that are also used to transport students or if the French have really fancy school buses!
After being in the car for much of the afternoon, we decided that we would stop by a market and pick up a roasted chicken and other foods and eat in our own little courtyard for dinner. We stopped by a large supermarket and bought some groceries and then found out that they were already out of roasted chickens. We thought we would just go to another market and pick up the chicken. The next 3 markets were also out of roasted chickens. Now we were really on a quest for that chicken. We were determined to find a chicken to go with all the other food we had bought. Finally market #5 had a chicken, so we came home to put together our wonderful dinner. Here are Caroline and Dave on the way back to our little house with the prized chicken!
We ate our delicious dinner, checked a little email, and decided we needed to go to bed a little earlier since we have to get up early Friday morning to take Caroline and Dave back to Narbonne to catch their train back to Barcelona.
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