Carcassone, France

Our next stop was Carcassone, France, a little town in Southern France with a medieval walled city a top a hill. (thanks for the recommendation, Nat) Our journey here was a long one - our first night train. The first train we got on was incredibly hot, almost reminded me of the days of so called ac busses in Asia, but luckily after 2 near miss transfers we were on the night train and the ac was working! Yay! We had the luxury of being in a couchette and the bunks they gave us were actually incredibly comfortable. With the help of some ear plugs, I slept the whole night, which is more than I can say for any night bus or train previously.

We arrived in Carcassone early and soon found that it was not your usual travel destination and no one spoke English. Thanks to Ms Comas' French class we were able to scrape by. Who knew how little we would actually retain from all those years of French class. Actually, it was kind of fun to try to fit in to the culture a bit more, and nice that when we tried to speak French people wouldn't automatically revert to English.

Most of Carcassone was spent strolling around the medieval village and palace, living it up like the French with our morning baguette and our evening wine and cheese or wine and mussels, my new favourite. We also did the cheesy tourist things like watching a knight's battle and going through the haunted house. It was pretty quiet at night but that gave us a good chance to rest up for the continuation of the trip!