Wednesday, April 17th, 2019

Woke up to a chilly and windy grey day in Carcassonne. The owner of the large, funky apartment I’m staying came down to show me how to operate the heating, and we had a pleasant interaction. I had made a loop in a dangling light and tied it up with a zip tie so that I wouldn’t cause my self a head injury on it during the night, she seemed ok with that once I explained. I’m staying in the main part of Carcassonne and the Medieval city is it’s own world, about a 20 minute walk from the downtown. I walked over and did the audio tour of the castle, quite interesting history and rebuild. Dates back to Roman times with numerous things in between. Really is the kind of castle you think about in story book times and apparently was used as the set for Robin Hood. Eating in Carcassonne is proving to be challenging. Last night I went to two places, that obviously had some free seats and got the “we are totally full” line. The French have not figured out that a solo diner will sit and eat and leave meaning they could easily feed someone if they wanted too. Lunch today was a fiasco. Went into the most authentic looking place Dame Carcas, in the medieval city and proceeded to be kept waiting at my table for half an hour while everyone around me had their order taken. Just as I was about to bail, they took my order and got to it reasonably well, but, really the problem is that they had 2 wait staff for a 60+ seat restaurant and for some reason the French business codes don’t seem to encourage hiring part time people. It’s frustrating because this is a super common problem in French restaurants in the smaller towns. Oh well “C’est La France!”