As I mentioned previously, we were driven to Trebes, our final (now starting) destination. We woke up early on Tuesday, ate a quick continental breakfast, ordered a taxi and 20 minutes later we were facing a well-preserved castle dating back to the Romans and the place where Charlemagne was fooled into retreating from a three-year siege. Let me 'splain, Lucy: the lore surrounding this place is that, many moons ago, Carcassonne (then called La Cite) was under attack by Charlemagne and his knights. At one point, after three years of mayhem and close to starvation, a certain Madame Carcas (don't know what importance she had in this small village) had the brilliant idea that she would fatten up a pig with all the food they had left and have it tossed over the walls onto the enemy camp. Charlie's peeps were taken aback; if these people had so much food left over that they could fatten a pig, there would be no end to this siege. They left.
You can believe what you want; but it's a pretty clever story and there is a statue in one of the squares dedicated to Madame Carcas.
Picture yourself a knight or lady back in the medieval era. More often than not, those pictures come from a movie you once watched. This place looks just like a movie set. Everything is old, older, oldest. There are walls with arrow slits, moats, a drawbridge, iron gates, cobble stone streets as narrow as my driveway, the requisite church, a torture chamber (that we didn't see), and many shoppes selling a variety of wares. If not for the throngs of tourists, it was a step back into time. Two quick notes about that church: One, it has not been prettied up like the rest of the churches we visited in Paris. It is rustic and medieval and "looks" old and very cool. Two, there was a choir of five male voices that sang for the crowd. AMAZING!!! We bought their CD.
While it seems like it, it was not our intention to specifically visit mostly churches in Prague and France. However, because of their religious, historical and architectural importance, Europeans have and will always show them off to the world and we were just 7 Broads ogling at their beauty. The added bonus was that, in Paris, there was music, incredible music; the kind that touches your soul and blesses you with it's beauty.
We had a quick lunch within the castle walls (cassoulet is their specialty - a delicious stew with duck, sausage, and white beans - yummmmyyyy!) and headed back to boat. Our captain gave us our instructions, different jobs and we are off!!
We came upon our first lock; which is when I paused in the previous blog. Unfortunately there was an accident with a boat ahead of us; a man broke his foot when the boat smashed it against the locke wall. This was not a good thing to happen but it helped as a lesson to the rest of us on what NOT to do.
The first leg of the trip was full of locks; Amelia counted 13 chambers that we had to prepare the boat. Let me introduce you to the "lockers": Kathy at the helm, Amelia and Linda in charge of the stern, Karen and Julieanne in charge of the bow. Susan and yours truly on stand-by. We were trying to get as far down river as possible to find a place to moor for the night. The ride down the river (where there are no lockes) is rich with vegetation, quiet, warm and breezy. Truly serene.
We found La Redort, a small village along the Midi that has a nice place to park your boat. The small restaurant within 20 steps of our landing offered delicious and plentiful dishes. We had our customary carafes of vin blanc and vin rouge and back to the boat for night caps and re-caps; with the world all was right. :-)
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