Appartcity Carcassonne

... was ****in awesome... google it to see what I mean... the craziest part about it is that people still live there...in the city! it is about 3 km around the whole thing, it is super cute inside, there are cafès and shops, a church and many old old buildnig where people still live!<br>We walked back to the hotel later and relaxed, then we went on a hunt for the grocery store, to our surprise, the "casino" across the highway was the store, Casino is just the name for the super ...

... it wasn't open. So we just kept on walking. Everything was still closed seeing as how it was only 7:30 or so....so we finally decided we'd try to figure out how to take a bus to our hotel. We figured out that we needed the number 12 bus...but couldn't find a stop that the 12 stopped at. So we just kept walking. We had bought a map of Carcassonne at the shop in the train station so we knew roughly where we had to go. After walking for about half ...

... to have it's effects: hands so frozen I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hold onto the much needed brakes anymore. <br><br>But then the drop in altitude began to work it's magic. Degree by degree, the air around us warmed , clouds began to dissipate, and the sun gained intensity giving me renewed strength. <br><br>To date, this is the only rainy day we've cycled in France (and it only lasted a few hours!). With optimism ...

Conrad was up at 8:30 am to start the pancakes. I had woken at 6:30 am for my usual bathroom trip, and I noticed how absolutely quiet it was here. It was very nice. I rolled out of bed at 9 am. We all had a pirate pancake breakfast. It was Claude, his wife, one of his daughters, and us. The other daughter had gone to a slumber party the night before. Conrad made a pancake ...

... I hope the photos turned out. Outside the castle are some vineyards; I am in France. <br><br>Two of my roommates are med school students from the Czech Republic. It is extremely expensive for them to travel in France which they are doing for a month. They have hitch hiked there way everywhere. I suggested that rather than walking to the perimeter of a city (which is where they start their hitchhiking) that this would be good use of E1 on a public bus to save time. They agreed.

... There where half-finished paintings splattered with red paint. Maybe he got a paper cut, Nick thought.<br><br>There was an entire room which turned out to be a portrait of Mae West if you looked at it from just the right angle. There was a very large painting of Abraham Lincoln, where Abe's cheeks were actually Dali's wife's butt cheeks.<br><br>There was a painting of Dali painting a portrait of his wife in a mirror, from behind the artist. The ...

... time. We had lunch in Narbonne at a quaint, local place. I had beef bourguinon, but it wasn't very good. Everyone else enjoyed their meals though. We were walking down a street full of shops, and I spotted some cool looking brown boots in a window I just had to try on. The shopgirl was so nice and helped me get my size, and we laughed about all the layers I had on because it was so bloody cold and really windy (about 3-4 C, but felt much colder with the wind chill). While in ...

... families. The mayor welcomed us with a very kind speech. Slowly and cautiously, the kids began to talk to the families with whom they would spend the next four days. Equally cautiously, they dared to taste some of the morsels served in our honor. There were tarts, beignets, couscous, olives, savory muffins with tuna and tomato, quiche, fruit, cookies. They tasted diabolo menthe, a mixture of green mint syrup and limonade (Sprite). After a while, the families began to load kids and ...

... Barcelona knocked a hole in the budget but it was worth every penny. We have visited Montserrat which is a monastery perched on top of a mountain, we cycled 85km from Sant Feliu de Guixols to Girona and back (talk about saddle sore). Our last stop in Spain was the Dali Theatre Museum in Figueres, which was fantastic to see some of the surrealistic work for real and not ...

... worse. Anne had duck again whilst I had an omelette...both with chips. [The term 'French fries' is a myth. Nowhere (except McDonalds) were we served anything but good old fashioned chunky chips in France.] We struck up a conversation with a couple of English ladies next to us who had bought properties and now lived permanently out here. Back to the hotel to watch TV. A concert in Berlin featuring Placido Domingo, a young man and a good looking (for an opera singer ...