Couldn't find parking! I think trying to find parking is the most stressful thing of traveling by car. Never know where to park the thing. Once, we did, we walked up to visit the Albi cathedral. It is the world's largest brick building. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. The inside was really nice, with a big choir room that was behind the main worshiping part of the cathedral, with a very intricate ceiling. It was nice to have the audioguide to interpret what we were looking at. All of the walls and everything were painted instead of adorned with as many statues. It was unique in that way from all the other cathedrals I have been in. It was nice to see something different. Cathedrals start looking alike after the first 3 or so. We also toured the museum next to the cathedral with some interesting paintings in it. We almost got locked in, haha the guards were speaking to us in French and we had no idea what they were saying but they thought we knew.
BRICKS
Such talent
Onto where we were staying for the night! I felt like Dad was taking us to the middle of nowhere, cause the GPS seemed to have a really hard time finding it. I thought maybe he had surprised us with camping for the last night in France since it pointed to an open field. Oh was I so wrong. Once we arrived at the real place, it was the complete opposite. We, ladies and gentlemen, were sleeping in a castle for the night. Yes, a small one, but, a castle is a castle people!!!!! It was gorgeous! Dad couldn't find the entrance. haha "But....how do you get into the castle?" The owner, Bridgette, was a really tall, kind, French lady. She showed us to our room, and it was just like I had stepped into Pride and Prejudice. A canopy, large mirrors, a mannequin with an antique dress and bonnet, old photographs, with a beautiful little key to open and close our door. Seriously. Has to be one of the coolest places I've ever been. It had a little hedge maze in the back, a pool, swings, and an old building where they use to keep birds? There was even a tower on our castle. Sweet! There were also old books, and music placed around the house. Very nice feel to the place. We decided to finish off the contents of our lunch for dinner, so we just brought it out and ate it on a table on the outside of the house. We didn't use knives, plates, or anything. We used the paper the bread and things were wrapped in before for our place mats, ate olives out of a packet, Dad was sitting with his shoes off and resting on an empty chair, and we were using our hands. Mind you, Bridgette came to ask us why we hadn't brought out plates or anything. Totally forgot, that in France, they are SUPER uptight about manners and eating with utensils and everything for meals. She probably thought we were the most disgusting people ever. I'm sorry America for shaming your name with such "slobs." Oh well, it tasted so good and that's all that I really cared about in the end. So we soaked it all in for the evening while it lightly rained, then went to sleep.
Wednesday June 21, 2012
Woke up, even slept in, and went to eat breakfast of croissants and intricate jellies. Yes I just described it like that. I guess Dad and Mom had a tour of the castle, I wanted to at least read a little bit out of my Pride and Prejudice book before leaving the castle. After leaving the castle, we were going to see ANOTHER castle. A bigger castle. The one used in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner in it. The Carcassonne Castle. Btw. We went past Toulouse, France, and found out later that day that there was a bank there where 8 hostages were taken and not released for most of the day! Scary! Anyways, we took some less trodden roads to Carcassonne through the French forest roads. It was really pretty. It felt almost like we were jsut driving around Scout Mountain or something. The castle in Carcassonne was pretty touristy, set up with many a shop and restaurant inside and overly priced carriage rides. But it was such the typical castle, you had to be impressed. Lots of towers with a cathedral as well of course. There was a really neat group of men that sang in the church. I was stupid enough not to put my memory card back in my camera before going, I kept thinking I had dropped it! Or someone somehow stole it for some odd reason as passing me by.
Aw. Mom and Dad
After exploring the castle, we set off for Barcelona. Long ways. And along the way, Dad wanted to go past some more archaic, castle ruins in the French country. Well. That was quite the drive. Windy and took us a long time. How I explained it to my brother Lane. "so we were going down this random country road in France today, and there's this huge tank in the middle of nowhere, like an army tank, so Dad is like, hmm. let's drive up this road and take pictures of it! It must be some sort of war memorial!!! so we drive, take pictures, and drive down the road some more and it ends up to be a freaking military base. And Dad is just la-dee-da-ing while there are men dressed in military uniforms on base. I was like Dad, make a U-turn IMMEDIATELY. I don't want to die because we were stupid tourists. They'll probably think we are spies! He took forever to finally decide to turn around. Wow. just wow."
That was quite the experience. Anyways, long story short, we ditched the whole idea of seeing the other castles. The GPS was not leading us to anywhere with inhabitants, not even close, and the roads were getting sketchier and sketchier and we were running out of gas. We took a bigger looking road back to start our journey over again in Carcassonne, and it seriously took us 10 minutes or 15 max, where it took us an hour to get where we decided to turn around at on the mountain roads. RIDICULOUS.
Drove to Montserrat, a little town outside of Barcelona, a much better alternative, where our hostel was for the next 3 nights. And passed out. Long days of traveling man.
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