carcassonne, but not la cite

we didn't go to la cite today, but we did go into carcassonne. there were actually a few places where i could have taken some nice interesting pictures, but for some reason sometimes i'm very shy about pulling my camera out in public spaces, so today you get 'from the car' pics.

a couple of quick things to tell you about the pictures that i post on this site, first, everything is full frame. not because i'm some purist who thinks things should be full frame, not at all, i will happily crop and tweek in photoshop to make something look better, but honestly, i can't be bothered. it's a lot of work. instead i've just set up a macro (or whatever it's called in photoshop) to resize and optimize the pics in one easy step so that they aren't *too* beastly on the site. the other thing to note is something i just discovered today, and that is that if you click on the picture you get a slightly larger version where you can see a bit more detail, cool huh? i was pretty excited when i discovered it.

today was a kind of a melancholic day with bouts of anxiety, i'm not sure if that will show through in the photos or not, likely not, i wasn't doing anything terribly deep today. although, perhaps it does show in the photos because of my reluctance to pull out the camera in the square and in the park and start snapping pictures. anyway, if you sense weirdness that's what it is.

oh, and all is not lost, we capped the day off with an oh-so-healthy meal of sausages, saganaki (opa!) and asparagus. which of course means we can't say things like "well, we always have our health", but damn, it was tasty!

and now to the pictures...

just in case you thought that this part of france was all just full of 'charmant' village houses and general bucolic beauty, let me assure you that it is also full of normal city stuff.

this is basically france's version of M&M meats, only the frozen stuff is all over the store (in freezers of course, not just strewn about...)

buffalo grill is some kind of chain restaurant that facinates me. i've never been to one, but for some reason i get the impression it's much like a ponderosa type place.

another place i've never been but facinates me is the dome bar. i think it facinates me because, well, there is no dome, why the hell is it called the dome?!?!? i've wondered this for 5 years now...

and of course the ubiquitous mcdonalds...

this is another place that has intrigued me for for the last 5 years is the italian restaurant called "elephant". i'm not sure what i'm missing, but last time i checked elephants weren't very italian... this has the added bonus of being in a kind of skeezy looking hotel.

once we did get out of the city we were greeted with a big chunk of land with random crap on it.

and so you see, it's not all roses and grapevines up here... (no roses this time of year, but i assure you there are roses, honestly, there are, would i lie to you?)


i promised you pictures of la cite today, so a picture of la cite you will get.

that sort of dark bit above the bridge railings, that's la cite... soon my pretties, soon i will have pictures from inside.

yet another thing that has facinated me for the last 5 years is this pizza hut. not to be confused with the international conglomerate Pizza Hut (tm), rather, this is a hut where pizza is served. okay, technically they call it a kiosk, but really, it's a hut. it's this tiny free standing thing at the corner of a street, it's square, so that frontage you see, that's how deep it is too. and it's just sort of floating, it's not even in a square, just on a corner where nothing else is.

you say kiosk, i say hut, lets call the whole thing off...

when we drove home i took lots of pictures, but really, how many pictures of vineyards and mountains can you stand?!? yeah, me neither. so i'm only posting one. i'm posting this one because it is my mum's favourite view on her way home from carcassonne. she drives past it several times a week, and always slows down to take a look if no one is around.

she loves the little winding road.

and of course i leave you with the obligatory cute animal pictures...

this is a very very tall wardrobe, i'm going to venture to say 8 or 9 feet tall or so. the cat jumps on it from a hole in the ceiling where eventually there will be a new (not terrifying) staircase.

apparently what happens when you give a dog a piece of cheese while you're cooking dinner is that she stays near you just in case the mood strikes you again. note the waggly tail.

g'night folks. who knows what tomorrow will bring, stay tuned!