Carcassonne and Albi: A Trip Back in Time

This week I went on a vacation into the past. First stop was Carcassonne, home of the biggest medieval fortress in Europe. Some of you may recognize the name from the game based on the city. I've never played it but I've heard it's cool. Also, some movies were partially filmed here like Timeline and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Next was Albi, which houses the largest brick building in the world and the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum. Since these are such visually interesting places, I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves.

Here I am getting ready to enter the medieval city of Carcassonne. I'm so excited!!

This was taken outside the walls of the city. I got to walk all the way around on the ramparts. It was so cool and the view was fantastic.

This is inside the castle. There in the background is where soldiers used to shoot arrows down at the enemies outside the gates. As I was informed by the obnoxious audio guide voice, they only shot arrows, they never poured boiling oil onto their enemies like people like to think. That would be too expensive.

And here we have the beautiful Basilica of Saint-Nazaire.

This is the hostel I stayed in. That was an interesting experience. Not as bad as I thought but still weird. The first night I had the room to myself. The second I had 2 American girls and a Chinese girl. It ended up being pretty fun because we chatted about our various travels and our lives here.

The shower was the worst thing about the hostel. You know those sinks in public places that you push the thing and water runs for about 2 seconds? That's not even enough time to wash your hands. Now imagine a shower that works the same way. And imagine that you didn't know you have to bring your own towels and that your room is all the way down the hall. Ew.

This is cassoulet, the famous dish of the region. It seems to consist of duck, sausage, and white beans. It was good but I could only eat half, partially because it was so heavy and partially because I had already scalded off half my tastebuds on the French onion soup right before.

And here we are in Albi. You can see the Cathedrale Sainte Cecile towering over the old part of the city. It's this cathedral that is the biggest brick building in the world. Isn't it fantastic!

Really, it's impossible to really describe how huge this thing is.

This is the inside. So ostentatious but beautiful.

And finally we have the building that houses the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum. Albi was his birthplace and this palace (Palais de la Berbie) holds the largest collection of his works, including his posters and even doodles in his Latin book from when he was young. It was a really awesome museum. Probably my favorite ever. He was really, really talented.

So in the end, it was a fantastic trip into medieval times and the world of Toulouse-Lautrec. But, as much fun as I had, after spending 11 hours on trains over the three days, it was definitely a relief to see the familiar skyline of Marseille coming closer.