The South of France

Last week, we had a lovely, relaxing trip to the south of France, thanks to some dear friends of ours who let us use their vacation home.  Their place is in Fontjoncouse, which is about 45 minutes from Carcassonne and an hour north of the Spanish border, in the Corbieres mountains (home of the Corbieres wine country).  Each day we spent half the day at the house catching a little R&R (either sleeping in or coming home for naps before grilling out and enjoying dinner on the patio with a glass of wine).  The other half of the day, we went to check out some of the sites in the area.  A rundown of our week:

We did a lot of relaxing on the weekend, but we did get out a few times.  We drove around the area and did a little hiking/walking in and around Fontjoncouse and saw some of the local scenery, including the village church and cemetary.

Monday we went into Carcassonne to see the Medievil City, which is completely walled-in, and even has a moat.  After we took the audio tour of the castle in the Medievil City, we had a traditional French lunch (Duck Confit and Casoulette).  Then, we went to Carcassonne Plage and enjoyed Eli's first beach experience!  Unfortunately, the water was a little cold for him to spend much time in it.



On Tuesday, we went into Narbonne and checked out the Cathedral and walked around the city.  We enjoyed another afternoon at the beach on the Mediterranian at Narbonne Plage.  It was everyone's first time in the Mediterranian Sea (if you count wading in knee-deep); the beach was beautiful, but the water was too cold for Eli and mommy.



Wednesday we went into the village of Lagrasse, which was developed on the River Orbieu, around an abbey that was built in 799.  It really is a lovely village with beautiful views and it was very refreshing to cool off with a wade in the river.

Perhaps the most awe-inspiring visit we made was to the Gorges of Galamus on Thursday.  There is a hermitage built into the gorge with a chapel cut right out of the rock.   It took us what seemed like ages on windy, narrow, mountain roads (that Drew likes to call horse trails) to get to the gorges, but the views were worth it once we arrived!

As you can see, we really enjoyed our trip to France and were especially happy to be able to spend the week together as a family.