Day 46, Friday, October 13, 2023.
Bob decided he does not want to drive on Friday 13. I didn’t know he was so superstitious! That works for me. I am happy stay put for a bit. We had originally planned a couple day trips from Carcassonne: to Albi to visit the Toulouse Lautrec museum and to Toulouse for a tour of the AirBus factory. That isn’t going to happen now as I’m not feeling up to two long days of travel and sightseeing. Too bad but it is what it is. So I have a quiet morning and Bob goes exploring. He climbs the hill to visit the back side of La Cité.
He walks over to the cemetery we saw in the distance yesterday. We both enjoy visiting old cemeteries.
On the way to La Cité he walks along a wall covered with a medieval style mural spelling out the name Carcassonne. We saw this at the end of street when we walked to La Cité yesterday but didn’t look at it then. I was unable to find out any information about this, which is a shame. It is really quite lovely.,
In the late afternoon we both go for a little walk. I find more gargoyles, well…actually Bob was the one who spotted these.
We go into Église Saint Vincent and…
discover that we can climb the bell tower for just 2.5 euros! I’m not wanting to do it today but I hope we can get back another day. We have climbed a lot of bell towers on our other trips, but so far not a one this time.
The old city in Carcassone has a lovely big open square with a fountain and lots of restaurants and cafés around its perimeter. There are lots of people sitting outside enjoying the lovely evening.
I had to get a photo of this huge old Sycamore tree. I wish they would grow back home. Our winters are just too cold.
Shop windows are starting to display Halloween items. These creatures are all made of chocolate. We have seen so many closed shops, restaurants and galleries. Every block in this old part of town, which is frequented by tourists, has at least one or two shops that have shut down. On some streets almost every second shop is closed. I am pretty sure this is because of Covid. It makes me quite sad.
This is one of the entrance gates to the old city of Carcassone.
This is mostly an opportunity to see the fortifications that make this citadel so unique.
Carcassonne is now considered to be the largest and best conserved medieval fortress in Europe. It is impressive with its set of double walls and ramparts. Both sets of walls and the area between them can be seen in this photo.
There is the prettiest green seaweed and I see fish, Lots of fish, little ones and then some really big fish with whiskers…catfish?
They particularly like hiding in the seaweed. I keep showing them to Bob but he doesn’t see them. I think he thought I was making up all these fish I was seeing until he took off his polarized sunglasses and then he can see the fish too. He even gets to see one of the really big ones. 
But first we pass two of these strange half built bridges. It doesn’t look like they plan on completing either of them although the bridge with a road bed is on both sides of the river and just has one section missing. We wonder why.
Another view from the streets on Bob’s walk, and of the ‘pirate’ tourist ships.
We bought some refreshing sorbet and just enjoyed the view before heading home to Sarlat to pack. Tomorrow we are on our way to Carcassonne.
After breakfast we go check out the market. The streets are crammed with vendors…
However there are many more vendors selling a variety of meats and foie gras. I’m afraid we weren’t tempted by these stalls.
We visit the Hotel de Maleville which has an artist’s studio on the top floor attic.
Here is another beautiful old building, the house of Etienne de La Boétie
There are more than 200 painted and engraved figures in Fonte de Gaume organized into compositions in the four main sections of this 120 meter long cave. We visited all but the narrowest section in the Diverticule teminal and the short cave on the right of the entrance.
The first artworks we see are engravings…some of them were made by the artist using his fingers to mark the soft stone. Rouffignac is famous for its Mammoths. 158 mammoths that have been found on the walls of this cave, this is 30% of all mammoth representations in prehistoric cave art. Yet, curiously, there have been few mammoth bones found in this area. We also see cave bear claw marks all over the walls. The parallel vertical lines below this mammoth are from a cave bear scratching his claws on the cave walls.
I was surprised to see that almost everyone in the group turned towards our guide when he started talking and they stopped looking at the drawings! Really? Couldn’t they have listened but keep looking a the artwork above our heads? It seemed such a waste to be standing here and ignoring these ancient drawings. One very interesting drawing of a mammoth showed its anal flap. Sorry, no photo of that one. Yes, this is a flap that covers the mammoth’s anus to keep it warm. Only someone who had very close contact with a mammoth would know about this detail. This fact was used to help authenticate these drawings, as they were thought to be modern fakes when they were first discovered..
There are usually 5 monks and 7 nuns who live at the abbey and there are only 25-30 people who actually live on Mont Saint Michel. We sat and listened to part of the mass, from the side of the church. The singing was really lovely and I found it interesting that the nuns and the priest sat on the floor of the church during the service.
There are so many interesting doors in this abbey.
There are so many smaller rooms and interesting spaces to be explored. This one is off the side of the crypt.
When the Abbey was used solely as a prison in the 1800’s, this huge wheel was was used to haul supplies up to the abbey. Prisoners walking inside the wheel were able to raise and lower a cart along a stone ladder inclined along the rock wall. 
We hear shrieks and peals of laughter and realize that is is coming from the people out walking on the sands now that the tide is out. Some of them are thigh deep in the water! There are a lot of people out there, some of them way off in the distance. Thanks, but I am happy to pass walking in mud and cold water.
Bob took interesting photos of the inside and outside view of these two stained glass windows.
…interesting details…
…crooked roof lines…
Did I mention it was hot? and the steps are winding and narrow, and it was hot! There are 284 steps up to the top, and I am quite pleased that I only have to stop twice to catch my breath. Climbing 74 steps up to our apartment every day is starting to pay off. There are twelve major roads that all converge here in a roundabout (traffic circle) with twelve lanes of traffic. The right of way is the opposite to back home. The traffic in the roundabout must yield to incoming traffic! It seems crazy to us, but somehow it works. In this photo 3 lanes of traffic are trying to merge into one to exit the roundabout!
We spend an hour or so admiring the view, and then we climb down those 284 steps, stopping for a moment at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier…
…and then we walk to the Eiffel Tower. On the way we see this memorial and realize that this is where Princess Diana died in a car crash 26 years ago.
When I was here nine years ago, it was possible to walk around under the tower and there was a wonderful view across the river to the Jardins du Trocadero. You are now allowed to go to the top of the tower but we will wait to do that when we return to Paris and the weather is a bit cooler. There are quite a few heavily armed policemen walking about. The one in the middle is carrying a machine gun!
We find a spot to relax in the shade only to discover that we no longer have any internet on our cell phone! We have had so many internet problems this trip! We are picking up our rental car tomorrow and we definitely need GPS so we use my little paper map book to find a store for the SIM card we bought at the airport. They do register our SIM for us, which is helpful but they also tell us that their internet has been down and may not be repaired until tomorrow. We head to the Orange store and get a second SIM for our second cell phone and then discover that our first connection now works just fine. The price for a month of internet has jumped from the €10 a month that we paid before Covid to €40! Sure hope that is the end of all the internet issues. We are hot and tired, and catch a bus home . We walked almost 16,000 steps today, in +34° weather! And it is going to be +30 for another week!
We walk by a huge Printemps store only to discover that it is a warehouse with a beautiful entrance.
We find a little boulevard park to have tea and these sweet older ladies are sitting opposite us. I snuck a couple photos but they were a bit too far away so the resolution isn’t very good. I loved their outfits, that they were both sitting the same way with their canes between their knees, that their feet didn’t touch the ground…and they have such expressive faces.
Soon another lady joins them.
We met this young lady on the flight. Alexa Kubicki is a 16 year old boxer who was returning home from a three month competition tour. She won 4 international Tournaments and received 4 Best Female Fighter Awards over the last 4 months. Next year she will compete in the World Boxing Championship and she is aiming to compete in the 2024 Olympics. I told her I would look for her in 2024.
I tried drawing but was so tired that I had problems with proportion. Not the best likenesses. I did manage to get another couple hours sleep on this flight so that helped.
It was a very long day, more than 24 hours since we left our apartment in Vienna until we walked through the door at home. First thing we notice is how big our house seemed after all the little apartments we stayed in! It was a really good holiday but it is good to be home. This blog is my travel journal of our trip, and I know sometimes the posts were long…so thanks for following along and a special thank you to those who wrote comments or liked a post.
We were pleasantly surprised though to find that food here was reasonable. I bought a cone of yummy hot roasted potato slices for just 3 euros. There were lots of other affordable food options as well as hot chocolate and hot alcoholic drinks and mulled wines for 3 to 5 euros. There are so many people here that sometimes it is difficult to get to the front of a booth to see what is for sale.
Near the booths is an area with beautifully decorated trees and ….
a skating rink! There is a 3,000 m² artificial ice rink with skating paths throughout the park. We watch the kids learning to skate, everyone is having a good time.
This all takes place under a canopy of the most beautiful trees, all lit up with thousands and thousands of white lights.
Just take look at the size of this tree! It is enormous! 
A special attraction is the tree of hearts, and we see couples taking selfies here.
I love all the lights and there is Christmas music playing, children laughing and everyone is enjoying the evening. I am beginning to feel Christmassy!
As we leave the market, I take one last photo looking back towards the Parliament Building…
This is a smaller market, only 70 stalls, and the only decorated trees are the man-made ones. 
We see a booth with goods from Bomo Art, the little handmade book store we visited in Budapest.
There are also some pretty crazy animal candles, cute stuffed gnomes, blue and white pottery and wooden boxes and cabinet with drawers. The tall one with six drawers is ‘only’ 350 euros! That is about $500.00 Canadian. Still nothing I really love to take home with us though.
These little pink snowmen were kind of cute…
and a tree decorated with bird ornaments is different. Only at 10 to 15 euros a bird this would be a very expensive little tree! There are at least 150 birds on this tree, so it would cost between 1,500 and 2,250 euros, which is $2000.00 to $3,200.00 Canadian! No bird trees for me!
The booths are centred around this big fountain…
and there are lights projected on a nearby building, adding to the festive feeling.
It isn’t very warm, the high today was only 9° and it is colder now that the sun has gone down. We want to walk and see some of the streets lit up for Christmas …
but we are both getting chilled so we head home to finish getting ready for our trip home tomorrow.
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