Day 8, Sunday May 11, 2014
Today we headed to Carcassonne where we would stay one night. On the way, we stopped at Canal du Midi. Upon reaching our Hotel Montmorency in Carcassonne, we had a walking tour and then a nice dinner.
The Canal du Midi was completed in 1681 and was constructed to connect France's Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. It is 155 miles long and reduced the time to get produce from the Mediterranean and Atlantic by a significant amount of time. It is a pretty little canal as can be seen in the pictures below.
The Canal du Midi was completed in 1681 and was constructed to connect France's Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. It is 155 miles long and reduced the time to get produce from the Mediterranean and Atlantic by a significant amount of time. It is a pretty little canal as can be seen in the pictures below.
We reached Carcassonne and had an orientation walk of La City before our group dinner. Medieval Carcassonne (formerly called La Cite) is a 13th century walled fortress city. Charlemagne and his troops besieged this city for several years but never succeeded in capturing it. As the story goes, La Cite was running out of food so Madame Carcas feed the last bits of food to the last pig and threw the pig over the walls. Charlemagne and his troops wondered how they could have so much food remaining after all the years of the siege and became disheartened and left. Take a look at some of pictures below.
After our orientation walk of La Cite, we took a break at the hotel and then headed out to our group dinner. After dinner, a few of us took a stroll to Pont Vieux to see if we could get a floodlit photo of La Cite's walls. Take a look at the pictures below.
Tomorrow we head for Arles with a stop at a winery and aqueduct.