Carcassonne!

Hey everyone!

I know :-O What?! TWO posts in ONE day! Well, I DID promise this one about Carcassonne on Monday!

Yes, so we went to Carcassonne yesterday, it was about an hours drive from our house. The scenery on the way was absolutely stunning! You have to drive up the twisting roads through The Black Mountains, there was a gorgeous, clear river that flowed to the right hand side of the road once we reached the city outside of Carcassonne, I don’t know where it came from though, might have dozed off for a few seconds :-P.

The most frustrating part in Carcassonne though, was being in the city outside of it, being able to see the towering castle, but not able to find the route to it! Not such great street signs ;-P! Yep, just blame the street signs! (Below - Carcassonne on a NICE day :-P).

It was well-worth it… once we found the entrance :-D! The best part was that I’m reading a book at the moment called “Labyrinth”, by Kate Mosse (not the David Bowie one with the kids that get lost in the labyrinth). And in it there’s a character from the 13th century (not too sure on the century, will look it up later in the book, wow, I’m impressed, just looked it up and I was right :-P) that lived in Carcassonne so you get more of a feel of what the castle and it’s grounds would have been like back then.

Anyway to get on with my ORIGINAL story, we walked through, have some pictures below of me standing in front of the entrance… holding a half eaten ice-cream :-P, (That's the second one)! (Top one - I'm the shortest one and wearing white :-P, my mom in the middle and my sister all the way to the left)

After looking around some “medieval” shops we came across “The Torture Chamber”. It’s like a museum of all of the torture… devices that they used on “heretics”, “witches”, and the “accused” in the olden days, the one date that I can actually remember was the first recorded date that they used “The Iron Maiden”, it was disgusting, that not even 500 years ago they STARTED using it (1515 A.D.). The Iron Maiden is like a sarcophagus that has long, I’d think very painful, nails on the inside, sticking out all over the show, the “accused” gets placed inside and the doors are slowly clamped over, it doesn’t do BRUTAL damage so the average person takes two whole days to die! It was so gross!!! Much worse things there too…

Afterward we walked around some more, ate, went to the BEST sweet shop EVER! Got ice-cream and walked around some more :-P! We drove home later, stopping by a gorgeous mountain valley, that over looked Hautpoul. (Below - Hautpoul)

Really hope to get some more (Wow! More sounds weird there :-P) fish pictures in sooooooon!

- Bianca

P.S. Yes I know, I thought I lived in south-west France too, but with this weather… pfft, it's okay though, it wasn't as bitterly cold as Ireland was :-D.