As the trip was essentially two days in France bookended by two days of travel, the itinerary was pretty simple: one day of sea, one day of mountains. Heading into the weekend, we were keeping an eagle eye on a threat of rain that danced constantly from Saturday to Sunday, waiting to see which 50% of our plans would be scuppered. As it happened, though, the first drops made their appearance just after sunset on Saturday, and by dawn the next day, the skies were clear once more. Quelle chance!
It was, therefore, an absolutely gorgeous morning for my first (figurative) taste of the Mediterranean:
There was something incredibly compelling about stepping into the crystal-clear surf here. For one thing, I've been in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but this was my first encounter with an (almost) completely independent (major) body of water. More to the point, though - this sea is so rich in stories and histories that I've been immersed in all my life. From Sunday school as a child, through French classes in grade school, to slogging through the Aeneid in college, the Mediterranean has been omnipresent, as often as not nearly a character in its own right. I stood ankle-deep in incoming tide and tried to wrap my brain around looking out at the same horizon as emperors, pharaohs, and apostles. And then, since my head was about to pop from the historical enormity of it all, I retreated to a glass of sangría.
There may have been escargots and a couple massive helpings of moules frites involved, too.
Since the weather was being cooperative, and there's only so much wading you can do in admittedly still-frigid water before your feet shrivel away completely, it was off to Perpignan, aforementioned regional capital, for the afternoon.
Unsurprisingly, given its location, Perpignan has spent much of its history as a point of contention between France and Spain, and has been annexed and ceded back and forth a handful of times. It spent some time as the capital of the short-lived kingdom of Majorca in the Middle Ages, and even after becoming a permanent French possession in the 17th century, it stubbornly retained its Catalan identity until industrialization in the 19th helped speed the spread of French culture. Even now, when you leave the city and drive into more rural territory, place names and the like undergo a subtle shift, taking on a definite Spanish flavor. And the city centre is certainly Mediterranean:
The Roussillon flag.
Easter Sunday dawned fresh, clear, and beautiful, seemingly scrubbed clean by the night's rain. Surprisingly (I thought) for such a small French town, some of the shops were open, which meant shatteringly flaky fresh croissants for breakfast, with a brief mingle with the locals as they walked down past the hotel and the bells rang from the cathedral on the hilltop. On a recommendation from the hotelier, we then struck out for Saint-Martin-du-Canigou, a monastery whose oldest elements date back to the early 11th century. It is nestled high in the Pyrénées, above the lovely little hamlet of Casteil.
The nearest carpark is here; the abbey itself is reached by a switchbacky path about a mile long, with an ascent of almost 1000 feet.
A few euros gets you a guided tour of the place by a real live monk; ours was baseball-capped, bespectacled, and ludicrously chill and soft-spoken, even given the fact that he was, you know, a monk. He also spoke almost exclusively French, and his descriptions of this column or that crypt were comically detailed and lengthy compared to the single page of English-language information that came with the tickets. When I got tired of straining to decipher the murmured French, I resorted to thoughtful nodding at obvious full stops, and thoughtful picture-taking during the rest.
Another ten-minute hike upwards yielded this vista:
Easter lunch:
Cadburys over Canigou
The day was capped, after a leisurely drive back, with a glass of muscat on the terrace, followed by a ridiculously good lamb dinner (yay carnivorism!) in the hotel's restaurant. An unorthodox Easter, to be sure, but absolutely lovely.
The last day consisted mainly of checking out of the hotel and driving back to Carcassonne, our port of departure. Since we had a few hours to kill, though, we spent some time wandering around the fortified medieval cité. This imposing walled behemoth was raised initially by the Romans, and later served as an important French defense point against the Spanish. When Roussillon was incorporated into France, however, Carcassonne found itself suddenly well within the borders of the kingdom, and the fortifications were allowed to fall into such disrepair that a proposal was made to demolish them entirely in the 19th century. This proposal met with popular resistance, and restoration work was undertaken instead - with somewhat more enthusiasm than accuracy.
It's a bizarre place to walk through. The restoration was done almost too well, to the point where it feels so (relatively) new that it couldn't possibly be as old as it is. I was reminded of nothing so much as a particularly realistic Renaissance faire site. On the other hand, with the milling tourists and vendors hawking trinkets, souvenirs, and whatnot, it was possible to see how this atmosphere was probably not too different from Carcassonne in its heyday. There would always have been food sellers, for instance; there may have been music; there would likely have been the out-of-towners standing in inconvenient places and gawking. The more things change, etc.
And finally, the last stop before checking into Carcassonne's adorably small airport: for lunch, to purge the last vestiges of Lenten vegetarianism, I did some online hunting for a place that would give you meat, in a slab, on a plate. And hoo boy, did I find it.
La Grande Bouffe is a lovely, vaguely rustic-feeling place on the canal that runs through the lower part of Carcassonne. I think they do things in addition to slabs of meat - I remember the menu having more than one food section - but if you order those things, you're doing it wrong. All I know is that I gave my order to the somewhat timid hostess/waitress, the skinny French guy went into action at the open grill in the corner of the dining room, and shortly thereafter, this was plunked down in front of me:
I had to laugh at the token potato, and the even-more-token mushrooms (covered in cheese, at that). Because, well...yeah.
My first encounter with a properly French bleu steak. I won't even apologize for the lousiness of these photos, because as I was taking them this thing was lying there going uneaten, and that was just - not acceptable.
And that - at long last - is my trip to France! I'm going to pretend I finished this entry ages ago and have been waiting to post it on la Fête Nationale. Yeah, let's go with that. On the plus side, since I've been holding off writing about anything else in an attempt to keep this blog in consecutive order, maybe I'll actually be able to update a bit about what I've been up to in the past three months! (Although I wouldn't advise holding your breath...)
