France: Part III

Day 6
On Tuesday we were up early with the kids and only had a 20 min. drive to reach Carcassone. Carcassone is a walled city-fort somewhat near the Spanish border and is well-known as the last major stronghold of the Cathars during the Albigensian crusade. I had just recently read a novel that took place there during the crusade and was very interested in seeing the area in person. It was very cold and windy that day and we bundled up to take our self-guided walking tour.







Here we are exploring the area between the outer and inner walls. The fortifications really were amazing, and the restored buildings in the interior were very pretty. It's purely a tourist town now, without even a congregation to fill the church.













We grabbed some awesome pain au chocolat; much better in France than around here, and huddled together for warmth while we snacked.



We made the rest of our rounds while I read aloud from our guidebook and then grabbed some Nutella crepes and paninis for the road.







We left town and headed back to our RV right around the time that it started getting crowded, and we sat down to our in-house picnic just as it began to rain. Perfect timing!





Isla slept through Carcassone but woke up in time to get in a little exercise while we ate



We had one last thing to take care of before hitting the road...





We set out for the town of Beynac with the intention of staying in a campground near the famous Lasceaux caves. The last stretch of driving before our arrival was a little hairy with both kids loudly letting it be known that they were done with the carseats. We finally made it to our destination only to find (again) that the campground was closed. We pulled over in front of some roadside shops and evacuated the vehicle to get some fresh air and sanity. I walked the kids around while Patrick investigated another camping option, admirably securing us a reservation in German with a French woman over the phone. I was impressed. We regrouped and decided to buy some cheese before we left. We had enjoyed some wonderful sheep cheese at Sarah's and were looking for some more but I was having a hard time communicating "sheep" to the lady behind the cheese counter. Fortunately for us all Patrick can bleat with the best of them and managed to communicate our order through animal noises. The man is multilingual! We strapped our children back into the RV, where they immediately began yelling again, endured the 4 minutes to our new campsite, added an additional 15 minutes following our confused GPS back and forth while trying to find the entrance, and finally arrived and enjoyed a dinner of pasta, baguette, cheese and fruit. Brennan kicked his soccer ball around and we all enjoyed the peace and quiet that comes with an off-season riverside campsite and children who have been liberated from the car.