First off- Happy Birthday to my Dad!!! it's still the 11th here in Nice, France... Cheers!
Second- Internet cafe's have been almost non existent in southern France. We found one in Nimes, and it was $2 for 5 minutes... So this is all quite retrospective :-) I'll see how we get on here about uploading some pics, this hostel in Nice has everything set up, but is sooo busy, it might be difficult to get the time on the net needed. So here goes....
Well, with the delivery of our new beastie (go the Clio!), we pointed it north and headed for the French border.
We decided our first stop would be Narbonne, for no special reason at all ( we had no idea what to expect). We found it to be a lovely little old town, with a canal through the middle, lined with old french looking buildings (as in a little run down looking in a good way, with flower pots and old yellow bricks etc), and lots of restaurants, although nothing was open and we were starving. We quickly realised that they were also partial to closing for a few hours during the day, though perhaps more because it's not quite the silly tourist season yet. We scoped the town centre, with it's squares and pastry shops, then when they reopened, went for a bit of french Haut Cuisine. Jen was determined to order a steak, although paranoid it would end up on her plate uncooked :-)
As seemed to be a theme with european cities, they often have wonderful old town centres, but boring, new expansive and sometimes industrial outskirts, I suppose what do you expect if you want people to live there with all the modern conveniences... But you can usually navigate though them to the good stuff with out too much trouble :-)
We read about Carcassone in the lonely planet, and were not disappointed - The place was swarming with French and spanish tourists, as it's old town centre is a medieval style town on the hill top, surrounded by battlements, and chocka with small alleyways and cool restaurants etc... Had a hot traditional Cassoulet dish which was superb, all home made gamey sausages and beans and stuff in a casserole, yum :-) The local cat hung around for a lazy mouthful too...
Second- Internet cafe's have been almost non existent in southern France. We found one in Nimes, and it was $2 for 5 minutes... So this is all quite retrospective :-) I'll see how we get on here about uploading some pics, this hostel in Nice has everything set up, but is sooo busy, it might be difficult to get the time on the net needed. So here goes....
Well, with the delivery of our new beastie (go the Clio!), we pointed it north and headed for the French border.
We decided our first stop would be Narbonne, for no special reason at all ( we had no idea what to expect). We found it to be a lovely little old town, with a canal through the middle, lined with old french looking buildings (as in a little run down looking in a good way, with flower pots and old yellow bricks etc), and lots of restaurants, although nothing was open and we were starving. We quickly realised that they were also partial to closing for a few hours during the day, though perhaps more because it's not quite the silly tourist season yet. We scoped the town centre, with it's squares and pastry shops, then when they reopened, went for a bit of french Haut Cuisine. Jen was determined to order a steak, although paranoid it would end up on her plate uncooked :-)
As seemed to be a theme with european cities, they often have wonderful old town centres, but boring, new expansive and sometimes industrial outskirts, I suppose what do you expect if you want people to live there with all the modern conveniences... But you can usually navigate though them to the good stuff with out too much trouble :-)
We read about Carcassone in the lonely planet, and were not disappointed - The place was swarming with French and spanish tourists, as it's old town centre is a medieval style town on the hill top, surrounded by battlements, and chocka with small alleyways and cool restaurants etc... Had a hot traditional Cassoulet dish which was superb, all home made gamey sausages and beans and stuff in a casserole, yum :-) The local cat hung around for a lazy mouthful too...
No comments:
Post a Comment