Carcassonne, Revisited

One of the major advantages of having a computer at the house is that I don't have random program participants wheezing over my shoulder telling me to hurry up since they have to check their email. Thus, I am going to catch up a bit on my tourist posts.



This was from Carcassonne, the first excursion that we had in France. It's been occupied by different people for about five thousand years, so UNESCO finally broke down and named it a World Heritage Site back in 1997. It was the starting point for the 2004 Tour de France and an ending point for the 2006 one.


These were the ren-fair jousters that must have wanted to die since it was so hot that day and they had to climb on a stinky horse to perform mideval theatrics. They were pretty good at spearing those rings, though. Then they had to sing some song at the end of which several lines were in English, but I still couldn't understand it.

Handy Wikipedia tells me that the novel Labyrinth was loosely based on Carcassonne's history, but does not inform me whether or not the David Bowie-spandex-musical film version of Labyrinth has any connection here.

This is the closest that France will come to avoiding a personal injury lawsuit: a dumb sign. These walls were huge. People were standing on top of them to take pictures of the surrounding city. A sign isn't going to do anything. In America I don't think I would have been able to get within ten feet of the edge (I bet Mom likes it that way)