After two “rest” days, I drove us to Carcassonne this morning. This will be where we spend our last night in France in four weeks time before we fly back to England. It was just over 80km but took us almost two hours with the many changes in speed. I learnt pretty early on that when you see a town’s name showing you’re entering its precinct you have to slow to 50km. Is that written anywhere? Usually not. Sometimes it’s 30km but that is signposted. 

The centre of town was filled with the same little cabins we had seen in Perpignan which were open selling hot wine plus cold wine and beer and other Christmas goodies. There were quite a few people buying bottles of wine to share at 11am. This Christmas fair was fancier than Perpignan’s though because it had one of these. 

An ice skating rink. There were loads of flashing lights and loud Christmas music playing in the background. Bing Cosby would you believe? Obviously not open at the time we were there. 

It seemed to us that this city and its inhabitants are much more wealthy than those in the Perpignan area. 

One of the reasons I wanted to visit here was to find out where to catch the bus to the airport on 4 January and to also check out the hotel I’ve booked us into. Both are very close to the Gare, which is very close to the Canal du Midi. 

Pretty different from our lock back home. 

This canal was built in the 17th century in order to link the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and it was used to transport goods and passengers. It is closed at this time of the year for about four months, but when open, is popular with tourists and boaters. 

Carcassonne is a very old city and it still has a very much intact medieval city which brings many tourists to the city. After crossing  the Old Bridge (built in 14th Century). ……

….. we walked up through the Aude Gate, one of two gates to the Medieval City …..

….. and we’re amazed by the roads. Amazed also we did not slip over. We walked around the old town which was pretty quiet because it was lunch time. This suited us fine. 

We did not go into the main Chateau but paused here for a photo of Mick. 

One more job for us to do on the way home – have a go at refuelling the car. Sounds easy but remember you have to find out how to open the cap and then how to get the fuel from the pump using a credit card. We have done almost 600km since we got it and the car’s computer was indicating we were averaging about 5L/100km. Brilliant. The receipt showed the car took 34L which cost €39.90. Brilliant. 

BUT, when I checked the credit card account online when we got home, as I always do, expecting it to have cost us just under $60, I was horrified to see the transaction as showing as $185. If I can’t sort this out, it means our fuel consumption may as well have been around 17L/100km. 😩