Day 42, Monday, October 9, 2023

We have a long drive to Carcassone today so we are up early.  Bob moves the car closer to our apartment so we don’t have to carry everything for three blocks, and no one is even up and about yet.  We have our breakfast and evening meals at home so we have accumulated quite a few groceries, along with our other luggage.

You can just make out the butcher’s stand on the street right beside the entrance to our apartment in the lower left corner of this photo.  He is the first merchant to open his doors, usually by 8:00 am and he is open until 8:00 pm, or even longer if there are still people on the street…and he works every day of the week!  When I told him that he works too hard he said only until today, then he gets two weeks holiday.

This is the paid parking lot near our apartment but it gives us an hour free time.  More than enough to load our car and get on the road.  I do love the Sycamore trees that we see everywhere in France.  They are magnificent, so huge, and they have the most interesting bark that looks like camouflage.  I have no idea how they survive in the middle of a paved parking lot… they can’t get much water.

It is a 3.5 hour drive to Carcassonne and we had planned to detour to Albi to visit the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.  Lautrec was born in Albi and this museum has artwork that can only be seen here. However we didn’t even think about museums being closed on Mondays when we planned our bnb stays, so the museum is closed.  I am quite disappointed as I was really looking forward to seeing this artwork and especially the large  collection of Lautrec drawings that are in this museum.  Of course other museums we were interested in Toulouse were also closed so we decide to just drive and get to Carcassonne a bit earlier in the day.

We have seen some interesting bathroom signs on our travels, this one made me chuckle.

As we drive south we start to see the odd cypress trees, which makes me think of Vincent Van Gogh and all the cypress trees he painted.

It is always an adventure, walking into a new Airbnb and checking it out…is it going to be what we were expecting?  So far we have chosen well and not been disappointed.