Day 17 - Cité de Carcassonne en prendre une 🎬

Carcassonne city - Take one! 🎬
We had 3 carparks programmed in, 2 of which are featured on the campervan 'stop for a night' sites, showing huge great campervans parked up on carparks, right in the middle of the city. Not places we wanted to stay overnight but we were hoping they would provide parking, with 'space' so we could explore the city. Off we went, 15 min drive, mid morning, miss the morning work traffic and the dinner time traffic... no luck! 🫣.
       It was mayhem! Road works, diversions, ever decreasing width streets, locked in the one way system, we had no choice. The 'main' roads (above) weren't too bad.... but once you turn left or right off them OMG... it got VERY tight. Wing mirrors in, I was hanging out the window, inches either side, Jill had the van on the pavements, adjusting slightly as the walls had drain pipes and window sills sticking out; it was ridiculously tight 😱 I was so busy concentrating I didn't get chance to take pics so Google Street View will have to do .  Builders vans, skips and tourists parked at odd angles didn't help either....a challenge to say the least lol.
When we did manage to get to the carparks, they were big yeah, but the spaces were much smaller than they'd appeared on Satellite view, only small car size really plus they were full anyway. All we could do was get out and try the next one. Round and round the city we went, trying to find a spot, Jill doing a marvelous job of 'threading' Daisy through the eye of a needle. Eventually we had had enough. "sod this, turn  right, this way goes back towards the campsite"  The road took us out of the city, towards the train station and along the canal.  
 A SPACE!   It was between two houses, on the right so we could pull in easily (remember we are driving on the wrong side of the road over here) just past a garage with a 'PRIVATE ' sign. Other houses had placed wheely bins outside to reserve their parking spots; this had none. "T his will do" I said. Jill was not convinced. Ever respectful, s he pulled in, but as she didn't want to encroach on anybody's space, whilst I went to see what was around the bend Jill went knocking on doors. 
"Bonjour, parlais Anglais ?" " Yes... I'm Australian" 😯 😅 The nice guy explained the space we were in actually belonged to his neighbour, but the space behind his car was for the house next door which was empty so we were welcome to use that.
Kitted up for the midday heat, rucksack, hats etc, off we went along the canal path back into the city. When you travel all this way you don't really expect to see a narrow boat from Manchester way moored up 😯
Timeshare, 1 part of 7, £3000 a year for 2 x 2 weeks use....no thank you 🤨
It was past dinner time, well past dinner time...food, need food. Under  the bridge over the canal was a really good corner cafe and the staff, which looked to be dad, mum, daughter, grandma etc were very welcoming; "Cafe et Croque Monsieur x 2 s'il vous plais" ...and being so ​​happy to find a parking place so we could explore Carcassonne I just had to take the token daft photo.
Time to wander and explore...
Unfortunately, that was it. "Where's the walled city/castle/chateau?" All we could find was a modern Carcassonne - modern buildings and lots and lots of shops. Looking at Google maps the penny dropped 😔 We had gone to the wrong Carcassonne 🫣   It was another half an hours walk to where we wanted to be and it was well into the afternoon so even if we went now we wouldn't have enough time to see what we wanted to see. "Sod this" said a very embarrassed and disgruntled Jill "coffee and cake time"
   Back to the 'square of a thousand red umbrellas' it was time to chill, watch the world go round, but instead of coffee we drank beer and Aperol Spritz...and enjoyed a couple of sorbets 😋
Time to head back as the weather was on the change again. Lots of little thunderstorms meant a little bit of rain as we left the city and as by this time it was 'tea time' traffic had increased. 

As we crawled along all that was left to do was look at the scenery...  
(Jill) - "pff 🤨 call that tight?! I could get down there easy peasy after today"
Back at site, I was in chill mode. Jill had a siesta to recover while I had a 6% 'wheat beer' and my new curry flavored cheese. 
We then had tea, Jill continued with Le Sock then decided (spontaneously at sunset) that she was going to try and find the frogs that had been making so much noise at night. I left her to it 😆  She returned without seeing any, despite admitting she'd even shone her phone torch into a bush where she knew one was lurking but, no joy. However after an in depth discussion with a nice French lady and a bit of Googling we discovered they were Mediterranean tree frogs. So, after a very frustrating day, off to sleep, Carcassonne Take II🎬, tomorrow 😉



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