Carcassonne, Avignon, Paris, Amsterdam

So I left La Barraque last Monday, catching a train from Auch to Avignon, stopping at Carcassonne on the way. Remember the photo of the quite small backpack in one of the first posts? Here's where that comes in handy. I wanted to visit La Cite, the medieval city outside the modern town of Carcassonne. i read a book with a lot of Cathar history that was set there, and it seemed really interesting.

Mistake 1: Not hunting around well enough for a locker to put my bag in. That thing was heavy, schlepped around a city on a hill.
Mistake 2: Not checking how far the ruins were from the train station before I left. It was a lot farther than I thought.
Mistake 3: Going in the middle of the day, when the only language you won't here in the Cite of Carcassonne is French. There were a LOT of tourists.

All in all, the site was pretty interesting, if extremely touristy. People hike up to this medieval city to eat fish and chips in a restaurant on the sidewalk and buy plastic souvenir swords. The church was beautiful though, as was the view. Anyway, I was only there for a few hours on my way to Avignon.

That is a nice town. Its a walled city, so you get the contrast of stylish 10 year old apartments set into medieval stone ramparts. I was staying at a hostel/camping ground on an island across the river from the main city, so there were beautiful views of the church, and the Palais des Papes, which was briefly the papal seat of power a few centuries ago. The last day i was there I went for a walk to Villeneuve-Les-Avignon which is not too far from Avignon. There were cool walks to do along the canal that encircles avignon, and into the gardens of an abbey (I never managed to find the actual abbey, but the gardens spread out for ages and were gorgeous) and I walked through a park where they were installing some sculptures made by local art students into the grass.

Anyway, TGVs are fast, so it took me less than three hours to get from Avignon to Paris, where I stayed in the same hostel I did the last time, and met a bunch of French Canadians, and we all went and took a picnic dinner and ate in front of the Eiffel Tower, watching it all lit up, and the light show that happened every hour. I left for Amsterdam at an ungodly hour in the morning (the definition of ungodly being too early for breakfast, which is included free in most hostels) and arrived at around 11am. I've been in Amsterdam for a while now, and I've been on quite a few free tours, which are really good, and visited the Rijkmuseum, Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank House.

Anne Frank House is one of the best places I've been so far. I've read the book, and seeing where the Franks actually lived, in such cramped quarters, was really interesting. But the best parts were the video interviews with Miep, a helper who smuggled food to the Franks while they were in hiding, and collected the parts of Anne's diary, and Anne's friend Hannah who saw her for the last time in a concentration camp, and her father Otto. Otto's interview was very emotional to watch, and you could tell how passionate he was about spreading his daughter's legacy after his entire family was killed. I was very affected by the house, and if you're ever in Amsterdam go visit it.

I love Amsterdam's bicycles, and the tram system. Roads in Amstersdam are very complex, and there are very few that cater just for cars. Most have a pedestrian footpath, a bike lane, and a tram line which may or may not be used by cars and bars as well. Crossing the road is an experience. I'm staying next to the beautiful Vondelpark (try saying that out loud and with a German accent) and its a 10 min walk to Dam Square, where there is beach volleyball going on at the moment, and heaps of street artists. Its a very lively city, especially in contrast to the car-oriented cities in Aus and the US which can often seem like robotic ghost towns. In Amsterdam EVERYONE cycles. Old, young, with children (the most I've seen is three kids on the one bike), with dogs (I saw a huge golden retriever on the back of one bike) brightly coloured. But all the bikes are pieces of junk. This is because the average Amsterdammer goes through about 30 bikes in a lifetime, and around 40 000 get stolen every year. But its a very small, flat city, which makes it a perfect place ofr cyclists.

Anyway, there's a free concert in the Vondelpark, which is where I'm off to now. Ciao!