WRM S1E10 Italy Spain Tour 2023 – Carcassonne and Tarbes

In this episode: We leave Nimes and head to Carcassonne, an old medieval city. Then we take a quick trip to Tarbes.

Welcome back to WeRideMotoz.  I’m Glen. And I’m Carrie. In this episode we’re traveling to  the medieval town of Carcassonne. Mhm. So in Carcassonne the check-in is like 5:00  p.m. so we have quite a bit of time today to   explore so we make our way to another  cute little french town of Minerve.

Yeah, Carrie’s always trying to find  these weird little places to stop at   on the way so and this one was kind  of neat but parking was a bit of an   issue cuz I’m always looking for free  motorcycle parking cuz that’s the plus  

Of a motorcycle but unfortunately in this  town no such thing only locals allowed. Only local traffic they had a bridge like it was   right there over into the  but it was only locals so. So we parked in the upper parking lot hiked  into town. It was pretty neat and we had one  

Of the best salads (oh yeah) we’ve ever had. It  was just so fresh it must have come from their   garden plot right there and uh definitely  a great little restaurant in that town. I tried the nougat bought some of the nougat.  Kind of a local thing it was pretty good.

Yeah that was good. And then we yeah packed up headed out  continued on our way into Carcassonne. It’s surrounded by fortified  walls there’s no traffic so   Pepe had to get parked outside  the city walls in a parking lot. We left Pepe in a parking  lot, put his put his cover on.

And hiked up to our uh hiked up through the up the   drawbridge up through the  town to find our apartment. We got settled into the apartment and by this  time we’re getting hungry so we set out to try Glen was getting, I was beyond  hungry. I was I was getting hangry.

There was some hangry going on. There was  only one restaurant that we could find open   but the only thing that we could get was the  traditional meal we ate it but it wasn’t good. He ate it, I didn’t order it it’s like a bean dish  

With meat stewed in it it  sounds good he loves beans. Yeah I liked everything that was in it but  the combination was these guys was pretty   bad but we have since found out that the early  the early restaurants are open to satisfy the  

North americans but typically they may not  be the best restaurant quality wise. Yes Okay we actually have a trip tip for you yeah  probably the most important trip tip so far. Yeah it it’s it’s one of the  most important ones for me. Eating hours in southern Europe.

Yeah so the eating hours in Europe in  general are significantly different than   what we are used to here in North America  and it can create issues so if you want to   avoid hangry listen up (yeah) restaurants are  open for lunch so that’s kind of one to 2ish

Spain we found out lunch  is actually kind of 2 to 4 Yeah it’s it’s kind of it’s a lot later. It is   a lot later. In France it’s often 7 to  9. Spain you might not get supper till,  

The restaurants won’t open till maybe early is  8 (yeah) but their normal time would be 9 to 11. Yeah so you need to take advantage of of  any restaurant if if you have a concern   about that you need to start finding places you  could get a little pizza or like Spain Tapas.

Italy had apptivo time or  apptivo time and things like. Sometimes in Italy we just have  apptivo that was our supper. If you found a good apptivo place you should need  supper you (exactly) you’d eat well well. And and  

They stay up a lot later so we were often  in bed by the time they’re starting their. But in an effort in an effort to circumvent  the odd time when we couldn’t get food uh   we began to carry emergency spaghetti  and pasta in the back of the bike and

Uh so we had a box of pasta and a container of  sauce. We did have some uh I don’t know what kind   of sausage that was it was for emergency  use and Glen ate it all in one night.

I think he was trying to blame his digestive  issues on the peach. Yeah might of caused some   problems so (yeah) anyway that’s this week’s tip  trip yeah plan your meals accordingly exactly. Before the bus loads of people arrived we  made our way through the near deserted alleys

We found this wonderful little bakery for  breakfast in this half timbered house. We decided to do the rampart tour  so we headed over before it got   too busy as the buses were starting to show up. We got to peek at a military graduation  ceremony that was going on inside

La cite has two fortified walls that surround   it in the middle is where they had  their joisting grounds for practise. The walk along the wall was really interesting. We got to go through all the towers and see the museum

Yeah so Carcassonne is a pretty cool  stop I think if you’re in the area   that it’s it’s worth the time  to to get in there check it out We went out that evening after it got dark and  wow that was you felt like you were living back.

It was kind of similar in the evening to  Mont St Michel (oh in France) yeah in France We were there in 2016 yeah  it was very similar to that. All the tourist have left.  Yeah the streets are quiet. We don’t consider ourselves  tourists. Yeah yeah all all  

The day tourists have left yeah um so  it’s worth if you’re going to go is to   spend the night there because it was just  really magical um that they had it lit up It you felt like you were  walking with some ghosts.   Yeah it was a neat town at night for sure. Yeah

So in the morning morning we packed  up and left this magical city behind. We were heading toward Tarbes. We hikes around, saw a few sites and. Yeah yeah  it was it was good for an evening and a night

In the next episode we leave Tarbes and we cross  into Spain. Another country. We’ll see you then.