Travel with parents, part 1

I finished teaching last Friday.  My parents arrived in Toulouse on Saturday!  After a great last night with my friends, I slept a whopping 4 hours then got a ride to Toulouse with Birgit and her boyfriend in his awesome Volkswagen camper van to meet my parents at the airport.  Spent Saturday night in Toulouse, showed my parents some of the sites in town and ate in a awesome restaurant.

Sunday, we got up and picked up our rental car then headed out of town to Albi.  It is beautiful.  Despite it being Easter sunday, the town was hopping and most things were open.  It is the birthplace of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec so of course we had to see the Toulouse-Lautrec museum and the city's really impressive cathedral.

Albi cathedral

We spent the next few days visiting some of the Cathar castles in the region around Carcassonne.  In order not to clutter up my blog with a poorly researched history of the Cathars, I'm just going to link the New York Times article that inspired the trip. (even if you don't read it, I suggest looking at the slide show because his photos are way better than mine) Anyway, to make a long story short, the Cathars were persecuted by the Catholics so they built fortified castles in really hard-to-reach places, i.e. on the tops of rock cliffs on the tops of mountains, so each visit requires a steep hike but offers awesome views across valleys and they look super impressive and mysterious especially in their crumbling state.

Chateaux de Lastours

Chateau de Quéribus

Chateau de Peyrepertuse

We did the hikes for some of the chateux and chose to photograph some from below.  There really isn't much once you get up there--they have mostly been left as they were after they were attacked, so they are pretty much just piles of rocks. They still look really cool!

Tuesday night we ended in the city of Foix and spent the night there, right under its castle.  These pictures were taken from the skylight of our hotel room!

We got to Tarbes yesterday to spend the afternoon and evening there.  I got to show my parents all the sights (LOL) and have a great dinner in a restaurant that I never could have taken myself to, and they got to meet some of my Tarbes friends.  This morning we went to Tarbes' awesome farmers' market to get some local wine, cheese, and produce, and then we headed out of town.  We're now in Bayonne, the capital of French Basque country and will spend the next 3 days seeing all the good seaside towns including Biarritz and some great little villages.  As I say about every place I've ever been in France, this one is the best!!!