Carcassonne
After our unscheduled stop at Minerve we finally Carcasonne, starting early enough in the morning to witness the grape harvest of the Minervois wine region. At Carcasonne we overnighted on the Aire which was only about a hundred yards from the medieval walled city (Bastide in the local parlance). The night shot below was taken from our bedroom window.
The rest of Carcassonne was OK but nothing special – high expectations again – but the Bastide was exceptional. It was apparently "over restored" in the nineteenth century and there are a lot of what I call Rapunzel towers - ie towers from a fairy tale.
It is a very popular tourist destination and our aire doubled up as a coach park in the day and we were amazed at the distances some people had come, there were coaches from Poland and Croatia for example.
At Carcassonne the aire is also the coach park and it cost us 10 euro to park for the day and stay the night. The coaches are all gone by about 6pm which left the place to us motorhomes. There was a place to empty tanks, fill up with fresh water and of course get this fabulous view of the walls.
