France Day I - Carcassonne

Okay, this is going to be more information than you ever wanted to hear about the Larsen Family Great France Escapade 2011. Feel free to scan and skip to your hearts' content - I won't be affronted. Or surprised. It is basically my personal journal, and I don't want to forget this stuff, so prepare yourself for some details.

Our journey began when Deirdre, our Irish landlady, gave us a ride to the airport. Bless her. We flew RyanAir, which is like Southwest in that the fares are super cheap but that there are no reserved seats and everything (luggage, drinks, priority boarding) costs extra. Luckily we packed a deck of cards and passed the time waiting in line to board playing War and Rummy. (Spencer really likes to win. So does Maggie. We usually have to referee.)

(sorry, I don't know why this paragraph is underlined.) (and also, I really like parentheses. I'm sure you didn't notice.) Technically, we went to Liverpool and spent the night there before flying to France the next day. That's how we got the 9 euro fares on RyanAir. We had a great experience at the Premier Inn though, and our best Pizza Hut dinner ever (kids got free pizzas, salad, dessert, everything because we ordered a single large pizza. Cool!) We walked to and from the airport and all we really saw of England was the walk through a nice but commonplace street to the Pizza Hut. The adventure really began when we arrived in

Carcassonne!
You really have to double click on this picture and see it bigger to grasp the magnitude and imposing facade of this castle. It's breathtaking!
We called it "Sophie's Castle" because we went to it on Sophie's seventh birthday, October 27th. Happy Birthday Rosebud!
The scale model of the entirety of the castle - the wall goes all the way around an interior village where you can eat, shop, and stay in a posh castle hotel!
Sophie was always willing to pose for pictures!



We let the kids all pick out a princess/knight figurine in Carcassonne. They were cute, cheap, and got played with constantly during the rest of the trip! Very good investment.

Maggie's first taste of an honest-to-goodness French crepe - we had to document the momentous occasion.

The crepe was good, but the service wasn't - this was the restaurant where the waitress made us change tables to one in the corner, ignored us for a while, didn't bring us bread or drinks, and messed up our dessert order but evidently thought we wouldn't notice. All the while we were doing our best to speak French, be polite, and the kids were quite well behaved. Oh well. Maybe it was petty of us, but no, she did not get a tip.

And on to our Formula One hotel... we will not be staying there again either, but it was just a place to sleep and move on.