Saturday March 25, 2023
Dear Adventure Avenue,
We landed in Paris around the same time we were supposed to – 9ish. It was a little later, but they definitely made up time in flight. My grand-mère’s wheelchair was again not waiting for her, but they went and got the person for it. This allowed us to zoom through customs because we didn’t have to wait in line. We also hadn’t checked any bags so we went straight to the taxis and took a cab ride to the train station (La gare Paris Montparnasse) with a very talkative driver. He was very nice.
We stopped at a Boulangerie type place in the station called Roberta and ordered some lunch. I had a ciabatta caprese and grand-mère had a pizza. We both had an earl gray hot tea.
Then we went to a Monoprix Daily for some water and Paul’s for some treats (pain au chocolat for me and palmier for grand-mère).
It was then time to wait for our platform number to show up on the screen. As soon as it did, we went and waited in the line to scan our tickets in.
On this train ride, the ticket scanner had to look at my passeport because he thought I was supposed to be a man because of my name. His son has my same name. I assured him this wasn’t the first time this has happened. (I found it a bit odd when I met a French author in a small group setting at school that the first thing out of her mouth was “You have a boy’s name”. Now, I’m used to it when I’m in France.
We arrived in Bordeaux St Jean and then immediately needed to figure out our Carcassonne train. We went down from the platform and saw the train number. It’s tricky because Carcassonne was not the final destination. We got on our train and then almost got off at the wrong station (they added an extra stop).
Once in Carcasonne, we called a taxi to come pick us up and take us to our hotel. Interestingly enough, the taxi is not able to take you right to Hotel de la Cité because only the hotel’s tiny cars are allowed inside the castle walls. We then had to wait for the little car to pick us up. Our cab driver couldn’t get through to him, but two other people were waiting for him to return. We waited until he came back twice, and on the second time we headed to our hotel.
We sat with the receptionist and got checked in. She took us to our room and we exhaled a sigh of relief – We’d made it!
After washing up, we headed out to explore a bit for dinner.
We walked a way before eventually ending up at a restaurant up the street from our hotel, Jardin du Carcasses Restaurant.
We both did the menu which consisted of a salad (goat cheese for Mere, tartine and jambon tomat for me), then the Carcassonne soup Cassoulet. This was yummy but I don’t recommend it if you have sensitivities to rich food.
For dessert, Mere had the crème brûlée and I had a scoop of pistachio and strawberry ice cream.
We went back to the room and went to sleep!
Until Tomorrow,
A
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