3 part blog: Part 1 Toulouse & Carcassonne

The next 3 blogs or so are going to be related to each other. Eric and I took a 6 day trip that took us through Toulouse France, Carcassonne France, Barcelona Spain, Andorra & back to Limoges France. 

The first blog will be about Toulouse & Carcassonne. This map will give you a quick overview of how the trip went down. It was about 14 hours of driving round trip. The three countries involved are France, Spain, and Andorra.

I think I have said this before but the number one thing I've noticed about the 

South of France is Sunflowers.

Europe is pretty far ahead of us on the whole "green energy" thing. 

Nothing like a good wind farm on a clear day.

We stopped in Toulouse for a little bit on our way to Carcassonne. Overall, we didn't find too much to do in Toulouse. 

This is the first thing we saw in Toulouse: Dangerous little toys for kids.

We visited a pretty massive toy store and marveled at a few of our favorite games that had been french-ified. I will post pictures from the whole trip, including this toy store, in a later blog.

Now we don't have this game in America, but we should. 

We ran across these entrepreneurs in Toulouse. There were about 14 children and a few adults staring mesmerized at this display of ingenuity. I just have to say it makes me physically ill that people earn money doing this:

Somewhere between Toulouse and Carcassonne we stopped to pick tons of blackberries and let me take pictures of random things I thought were interesting, such as these snail trees, I've always wondered where snails come from.

And grapes, grapes, GRAPES!

Before I move on to Carcassonne, I just wanted to mention a few things I learned about

Toulouse. Toulouse is famous for producing violet. We even got to eat violet ice cream.

Sadly it was white in color and not purple. It was pretty tasty, it did not taste like soap 

as I had thought it would.

Secondly, I would love to tell you about the zodiac symbols and how they started in Toulouse, 

but that would be a lie, just like the lie my brother told me right before I took this picture.

I was excited to have my picture taken with my symbol because Eric told me it started here. 

Eric was of course lying and it took me way too long to figure it out.

We finally arrive in Carcassonne. Eric had one goal in mind: See a medieval knight show. I think this was mostly to show up our friend Tobias. Eric and Tobias once went to great lengths to go see a medieval reenactment and it turned out to be 4 middle age guys sword fighting each other. And they had to pay to watch. 

We didn't get a video of the jousting stick/thingy exploding as they hit each other, 

but here ya go.

This is the best picture of the castle/fortified city that I can show you. I had to snap it as we were driving away. It was hectic traffic and we couldn't turn around due to the frustration of driving a manual car and an entire continent that loves round-abouts.

Finally we arrive to our awesome camp ground. 

Listen at the beginning of the video for some familiar music.

Next stop is Barcelona!