(A view from the train)
Prior to the last several years my amazing husband had not done much in the way of international travel. We have been working hard to bring him up to speed and this week he hit countries 9 and 10. 10 of course, being the milestone. Country 10 is France, and we came to be present for the survey on a boat we are considering purchasing. Originally we had hoped this process would go much more quickly than it has, and in anticipation of actually taking delivery of the boat this week, Larry had requested the time off when he had to put in his holiday requests at the end of last year. Since he had it already, we opted to turn this business trip into a short holiday.
Some of the places we’ve visited have been new adventu
res for me as well as for Larry. Other times I have enjoyed being able to play tour guide for Larry. This trip is a combination of those things. Right now we are both tourists. I haven’t been to this area of France before, we’re in the Southern most part, just north of the border with Spain. Besides having a beautiful, picturesque coastline, this is also one of the best (and many think most underrated) wine regions in France – Languedoc. Enjoying a glass of local wine with lunch and dinners has been an adventure in deliciousness. I plan to purchase a few bottles for us to take back home to Abu Dhabi.
We flew into Barcelona and caught the high speed Ave train up to Perpignan. What an experience! 
I haven’t been on a train that was so smooth. It is light years away from my last kidney jarring experience on a Spanish train! (That was prior to completion of the high speed tracks.) You don’t hear or feel a single ‘clickety clack’ and the ride is akin to a monorail more than a train. At a couple of places, the tracks parallel the main highway and it was exhilarating to see how much faster we were going than the traffic on the road. The train ride made short work of the trip. Normally a 2½ hour drive (without city traffic) the Ave cuts travel time almost in half and makes only 2 stops en route.
We cabbed the 7 or so miles from the train station in Perpignan to our hotel. The small town that is our focus, and our initial stop here in France, is called Canet en Rousillon. 
It has a wonderful, homey, beach town feel and the residents are smiling and happy, and extremely friendly. The petite size of the town lends well to walking, and the air this time of year is clear, cool, breezy. It feels great! It’s slow season here, so many of businesses are closed for holiday, or have short hours. Except of course for the restaurants. It appears that all of them are open. As is typical for France, they are mostly smaller and family owned. As this is a coastal town, there is a focus on fresh local fish, and the meals do not disappoint. It leaves me wishing we had opted for an extra day here, just for the food and wine, and the relaxed easy feel of the town! But we didn’t.
We hopped another train, and headed for our second (and only other) stop in France, the medieval walled city of Carcassone. We arrived on Saturday morning – market day – and after dropping our bags at the hotel, wandered to the street market we saw from the taxi. There are a couple of markets in town, and I recommend asking a local which one to go to. The market we went to was for the Middle Eastern inhabitants of the area. We had to laugh. Everybody was speaking Arabic, and many of the wares were similar to what we see at home. Except for the brisk air and surrounding mountains, we could have been in Abu Dhabi. Had we known about the market with the food and pastries, we would have gone in search. Instead we cut out and had a very nice early lunch at a small brasserie along the boulevard. Again we had really good food, with a half carafe of house (local) wine that was delicious!
Carcassone is a hilltop town with a walled city, and a long, interesting, history. It has been occupied by Romans, Visigoths, Saracens and Franks. The initial walls were built to protect the inhabitants from the invading Romans. In the late 12th
century, a second wall and moat were added to further fortify the structure. At that point Carcassone became a base for the Cathars, until Pope Innocente III launched the crusade against the Cathar heretics. Carcassone was besieged, and ultimately surrendered in August of 1209. The Inquisition was established, and Carcassone became the center for a religious tribunal. All of the heretics were incarcerated 
within the town walls, and the last of the Cathars was burned at the stake just below the walled city. Carcassone was turned into a fortress, and guarded the border between Spain and Aragon until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. At that point it was no longer strategically located. The fortress/castle/walled city fell into disrepair until the mid-1800s, when the initial restorations began, and were not completed until 1911. The current walled city shows a terrific illustration of the differences between building techniques in Roman vs Medieval times. It is also a great example of how towns were set up in Medieval times. There are multiple shops, hotels, and restaurants operating within the walls, much as there would have been then. (Though I am certain haute couture was not a thing in those days, nor did the shops back then did not sell plastic placemats with images of the town lasered onto them.) We spent the entire afternoon touring the Medieval city and enjoyed afternoon tea below the ramparts. Our hotel offered such a spectacular view from the breakfast room, that we opted to stay in rather than grab something on the way back to the train station.
All in all we spent less than 24 hours in Carcassone, and less than 48 in Canet en Rousillon. Nevertheless, we fell in love with both towns, for very different reasons. I think we would like to visit this area again, with time to visit wineries and relax a bit more. As I finish this, we are again on the train, this time headed south. I will resume tour guide duty when we reach Madrid. (For those of you playing along with ‘Where over there is Lare?’ on Facebook, you now have a leg up for tomorrow’s posting.) We continue to enjoy this ride we are on….