Well… it’s not just because the city of Carcassonne is a medieval city which still preserves its old city (la cité médiévale) and the fortress remaining intact until now. It’s also because… I visited this city only two days before the lockdown!
The story begins where my boss asked me to accompany her for a short trip every weekend to several cities around Marseille (and southern France) before she leaves to our home country for good. And since I also like travelling a lot, discovering new places, I said yes to her without hesitating. Though at that time the Covid-19 plague has started to spread in France, but we were not really aware of it. I mean I knew and learnt about this fact from the news but I felt like… as long as we keep ourselves healthy and being optimistic, why not just take this opportunity?
The first city to which we would like to explore is Carcassonne, because everybody says the city is very unique with its own, huge, antique fortress. And I’m also fond of exploring new places, especially historical buildings and sites which is a good thing for me to expand my horizons and enrich my knowledge. Well I’m kind of a Dora the explorer but the adult version (without the backpack and lantern?).
So we departed on Saturday 14th of March by train and arrived in the early afternoon. At that time the restaurants, stores, cafes were still open, though there were not a lot of people but still we saw them walking around, either the local people or the tourists. But one thing that we noticed, as well as in the city where we live, Marseille, a few people started to wear face mask. I also overheard a man speaking to his daughter in Italian while my boss took this photo below. Overall, Saturday in Carcassonne was lovely as the day was quite shiny and people still strolling around the city.
We also still had the chance to step inside the medieval city which is situated uphill, which looked like a very huge castle in most of Disney movies and to me this is really like a dream came true. Well I have visited many historical places especially castles, palaces in other cities and places in France, but this one is sooo gigantic, looks very old, and remains intact. It made me feel like as if I was in a Hogwarts school ?..
Luckily we also had the chance to explore inside the medieval city which apparently is a city with its restaurants, hotels, museums. I thought there was nothing inside the fortress but only remains of bricks because we had to climb the hill first and walked throughout the paved road…
We intended to come back to the old town on Sunday to find out more about what is inside the castle, the fortress, I mean we would love to see what the chambers, the rooms, the corridors and halls look like. But then when we were back to the hotel at night and watched the TV news live featuring Edouard Philippe, announcing that starting from the next day (Sunday) all the restaurants, museums, cafes had to be closed in order to avoid the pandemic spread… we were like… “Alright I think we must change our train schedule!” I said to my boss, laughing bitterly.
So then we decided to come back to Marseille on early afternoon the next day, 15th March, and cancel our intention to make a thorough visit inside the fortress. While on our way back to the train station, we noticed this town became quieter than ever, though I still found one or two people sitting down at the park, a granny feeding a duck with her grandchildren…
But I feel like this small city appears to be more like a ghost town than a touristic one… In addition, the sky was so gloomy that day, as well as the city temperature was lower than before (as we came from the south and are exposed to the sunlight a lot ?). However, we feel that we have been lucky to be able to visit Carcassonne just before the confinement day began, especially for my boss since she hasn’t had yet visited many places in the southern part of France.
I know as this is my first story on Local Guides Connect, I don’t write it quite well like in articles for magazines (and of course you can find information about Carcassonne anywhere by just googling it ?). But by sharing this personal experience with you, I hope it can cheer up your confinement day a little bit…
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