So Mostly our Spring Break trip was planned around visiting this amazing city. We got the board game Carcassonne from the Johnsons for Christmas this year in anticipation of the upcoming Spring Break trip. Carcassonne (in the Languedoc region of central southern France), doesn’t have too many more famous touristy places near it so many people never see it. We were excited to explore and check out this amazing 13th century world of towers, turrets, and cobblestones. It is known as Europe’s ultimate walled fortress city.
Located only one hour away from our lovely “PALACE HOTEL” (as dubbed by Cole all week), we were in the perfect location to see this neat place. Driving up to it was pretty cool. It sits slightly elevated above the rest of the modern day city nearby and looks completely out of place!! Talk about a dramatic way to build the anticipation!
Drawbridge leading to the Narbonne Gate: It was built crooked so as to slow down attackers.
With an inner and outer wall massive in size Carcassonne was pretty well fortified. The walls extend nearly two miles around, contain 52 towers and defended an important site; an intersection between North, South, East and West trade routes. During peaceful times they used the area between the walls for jousting and tournaments.
Josh age 7:
It was such a pretty day and Carcassonne was everything we had hoped for
Chris broke out Carcassonne about now so that we could officially say that we had played Carcassonne in Carcassonne. Lisa wasn’t so sure that this was “cool”, but the rest of us were okay with it! And I’m sure we looked really silly……
This store was closed, but we were excited to see you can also purchase Carcassonne in Carcassonne (for over inflated tourist prices-I’m just sayin’)
We dressed Josh and Cole alike because its cute and helps us keep track of the little guys, but ironically Jared matched too….I didn’t make him dress to match:)
We took a tour at this point so we could walk around the wall a bit and check out the views:
This side was probably our favorite….so we had some quality photo moments:
11 Medieval Rascals playing on the wall
We walked through the city a bit to get over to a different bridge for outside views and let the kids play at a little park:
This shows just how massive these walls are: Carter looks like a midget in comparison!
The view from the other bridge in the city:
Last parting pictures of the day and some of my absolute favorites of the day:
As we drove away we stopped momentarily for a quick road side picture. I love how it turned out…….almost magical at this time of night. After getting the little ones tucked in beds, Chris, Jared, and the big boys watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves from the 90’s which happens to have a lot of scenes in it shot here in Carcassonne. While it was cool to see the places we have now been, it was apparent that this was filmed over 20 years ago….talk about cheesy! We’ve come a long way in film since the early 90s!!
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