Tue 29th Aug
The drive from Bordeaux to Carcassonne was pleasantly uneventful and we arrived at our hotel at around 2.30 pm. Our accommodation for the one night was at the 4* Mercure Carcassonne La Cité hotel and our room was nice enough and totally adequate but, after our recent 4* hotel stay in St Malo, this one would really be better described as 3*, although Mark said it’s only 2.5*. The bathroom was basic with just shower and hand soap and without any shower cap, body cream and the usual extras that come with a 4* rating. Please don’t think I’m complaining, I’m not, but it is more the scientist in me trying to establish some clear thought pattern for whoever rates these establishments! I would really love to know who awards these star ratings and what criteria they use as there is very little consistency across the planet.
Our room, with the basic bathroom, was quite nice, albeit small at just 18 m2, but was on the first floor and had a view out to the walled city of Carcassonne just off in the distance. There is a bit of a funny story to do with our small room though. We knew we would be pressed for size in this hotel and so we each packed just a few items into our carry-on bags for the one night stay. However, when we arrived at Carcassonne, it was rather cool and windy and our attire was not nearly suitable. So, there we were, in the car pack, unloading our cases from the back of the SUV and rifling through for warmer clothes. I found this situation more amusing than Mark.
Our initial plan, when we booked this stay from Bordeaux where it was 400 Celsius, had been to spend the afternoon by the pool but the current weather put a stop to that. So, I trawled through and found a Voice Map tour for the area which we downloaded and took. We had taken a live-guided walking tour of the walled city when we visited here some seven years ago but neither of us remembered much and this Voice map tour was actually better as there was much greater detail about the architecture and rehabilitation of the site and information about key points in history for the ancient city. This was a much more expensive Voice Map tour, compared to others we had taken, but I now know why! It was excellent and I would highly recommend this tour over other tours, if you’re ever in the area.
One area within the walled city that was brought to our attention on this tour, that we don’t recall from our previous live tour, was the house of the Dominican Inquisitors and the Tower where they inflicted their torture. The Dominican led Inquisition was about 250 years before the Spanish Inquisition and, according to the historian narrating our tour, he was an inspiration for the Spanish Inquisitors. It appears that St Dominic, or Dominic Guzman, helped to organise sieges against the breakaway group of Cathars, who did not pay tithes to the Church. However, they then expanded to include other groups such as leppers, witches, faith healers, homosexuals and Jews and really just every minority group you could imagine. Now, I went to a Dominican Convent school and I don’t recall the nuns telling us this was the main selling point of our patron Saint. It does go some way to explaining the meanness many of them meters out though! I could not wait to get back to the hotel to do a little digging on old Dom and ask my two sisters if they knew about his pedigree!
It was around 5.30 pm by the time we finished our tour and got back to the hotel. Most restaurants in the area don’t open until at least 7 pm so we were pleased to have been given a welcome drink voucher by our hotel and we headed to the bar, for said drink, and waited until closer to 7 pm to walk back into the walled city to find somewhere to dine. Our narrator on the audio guide had recommended the restaurant Adelaide and so we decided to give this a go and we weren’t disappointed. It was a reasonably priced meal and the food was nice. We were back in our room by 9 pm which was quite a late night for us! It was on to Montpellier for us tomorrow.
