Carcassonne

View from afar.

Carcassonne is another of those places where I’ll let the photos do the talking. The modern town is nothing special, but the Cité Médiévale, the medieval fortress, is more than worth seeing. It’s free to enter, and the inside is its own mini-town, complete with cobblestone streets, classy and not-so-classy restaurants, and souvenir shops.

I toured the castle and walked all the way around the ramparts. The place definitely begs to be compared with Mont Saint-Michel (below), an eleventh-century abbey on a pseudo-island in Normandy that I visited last time, if nothing else because of the similar influx of tourists and touristy stores within. I still can’t decide which I prefer.